Sékou Touré: Guinea’s Fidel Castro, and His Connection to the Political Thought of Mali’s Modibo Keita

Abstract

Although once a French colony, Guinea never embraced French cultural values to the same degree as the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Particularly after independence in 1958, it rigorously maintained a zealous attachment to its historic African and Islamic traditions. In large part this was a concerted and deliberate design. Guinean nationalists viewed the colonial relationship with France, which had begun in 1889, as synthetic, and, according to L. Gray Cowan, a specialist in Guinean studies, they consequently “determined to reassert those values which were peculiarly African [and Islamic] and upon which the structure of African society rested.”¹ Hence, Sékou Touré, upon becoming Guinea’s first president in 1958, “reiterated his view that exploitation by the colonial regimes resulted not only in robbing Africa of its resources but in destroying the basic values of African society. The changes which the colonial system brought about in African traditional life undermined the network of mutual obligations which created communal solidarity.”²