As of 1927, French traders, missionaries, and government representatives had been present in Côte d'Ivoire for nearly 250 years. Treaties and trading posts established with local African leaders fueled French appetites for ivory, cocoa, coffee, and other goods, contributing to the colonization of Côte d'Ivoire by France in 1893 as part of the European Scramble and Partition of Africa. France asserted authority over multiple territories (the post-independence nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal) that it referred to as ‘French West Africa’. Ruled from Paris with the imposition of French language and authority, ‘French West Africa’ residents were not accorded input or representation in governing decisions. However, all were subject to the indigénat, a form of apartheid that established a separate system of laws from those that applied to French citizens and administrators. Its terms included forced labor, military conscription during the Great War, a head tax, and subjective punishments.

Mansa Musa, 14th century ruler of the Mali Empire, depicted in the 1375 Catalan Atlas. Image credit: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ahmadou Kourouma, who would go on to become one of the most acclaimed Francophone African writers of the 20th century, was born in Boundiali, Côte d'Ivoire, in November 1927. A member of the Malinke (Mandinka) ethnic group descended from the distinguished Mali Empire of the 13th-17th centuries, Kourouma’s early aptitude for mathematics belied his future renown as an author. His uncle Fondio oversaw his education in the local school system before Kourouma went to Bamako, Mali, for secondary studies. However, Kourouma was expelled for participating in student protests and returned to Côte d'Ivoire in 1949 where he was drafted into the tirailleurs sénégalais, a French army unit consisting of African soldiers. His refusal to follow orders to put down African independence activities resulted in punishments that included deployment to French Indochina from 1950 to 1954. Kourouma subsequently resumed his actuarial education in Lyon, France, returning to Côte d'Ivoire upon its independence in 1960.

This homecoming of sorts was short-lived as Kourouma increasingly soured on some of the policies and actions of the first Ivorian president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny. The new nation’s leader maintained close ties with Côte d'Ivoire’s former colonizer and set the stage for export-based economic prosperity but ensured his own continued power by eliminating political rivals engineering ‘democratic’ elections that resulted in one-party rule for decades. After a brief stint in prison, Kourouma once again left his home country, moving first to Algeria (1964-1969) and then to France, where his employer sent him back to Côte d'Ivoire to help run one of its bank branches.

Ahmadou Kourouma at the International Geography Festival 2000. Image credit: Photographe de la Ville de Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, dans le cadre de sa mission ; scan par Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Kourouma’s insurance profession notwithstanding, he turned to the written word to express his disappointment in African leadership through storytelling. His first novel, Les Soleils des indépendances, was awarded the Grand Prix littéraire d’Afrique noire in 1969 and the Prix Maillé-Latour-Landry from the Académie française in 1970. Through the story of a former independence fighter and his wife navigating the fluid post-colonial environment, Kourouma illustrated the hopes, frustrations, and resilience of African people as well as calling out the damage and adversity wrought by colonization but also inflicted by Africans themselves. His use of Malinke terms and non-standard French contributed to a lack of publishing interest in France and resulted in the book being originally published in Canada by Presses de l'Université de Montréal.

His next literary work was Tougnantigui, le diseur de vérité (“The Truth Teller”), a play that was deemed subversive, prompting him to self-exile in Cameroon in 1974 and move to Togo a decade later. Kourouma remained a keen observer of African society and governance as various countries developed their own political forms and interacted with other African and overseas nations. In 1990, Kourouma published his second novel, Monnè, outrages et défis, addressing the long practice of colonialism, and drew from Malinke culture in En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages (1998) to present a griot’s telling of a hunter’s transformation into a dictator, alluding to the situation across several African countries.

In 2000, Kourouma’s book Allah n’est pas obligé was published to critical and commercial acclaim. After the death of his mother, young Birahima must fend for himself and sets off through several countries to meet his aunt in Liberia. He encounters a variety of characters along the way but ends up conscripted as a child soldier during the Liberia and Sierra Leone civil wars of the 1990s. His story not only encompasses the violence and injustice of war, it includes his reflections on human nature and the role of Allah, all told from the relatively innocent point of view of Birahima, whose young life is filled with repeated hardships. Through the character of Birahima, Kourouma captures the despair and strength of African people in the face of the corruption and brutality that millions face from their own rulers. His searing tale received both the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens that year.

Although Kourouma had returned to live in Côte d'Ivoire in 1994, his refusal to remain silent upon the outbreak of civil war in 2002 sent him to live in Lyon, France, where he began work on a sequel to Allah n’est pas obligé called Quand on refuse on dit non. Birahima is no longer a soldier and has moved back to his home country only to find it embroiled in its own conflict. The work was unfinished when Kourouma passed away at the age of 76 and was buried in Lyon. The Salon du Livre Genève (Switzerland) has awarded the Ahmadou Kourouma Prize each year since 2004 to a Francophone sub-Saharan African writer of fiction. This giant of African literature finally settled for good in Côte d'Ivoire in 2014 when his remains were interred in the capital of Abidjan amidst praise from all walks of the Ivorian community.

Activité de français

Ahmadou Kourouma was one of the first writers to make a point of writing in both Malinke and French to realistically convey the background and viewpoints of West Africans. Watch a short video of him discussing how the use of a particular language communicates culture and perspective that are not readily evident in another language. You may click on the CC (closed caption) button for French subtitles with the understanding that they are auto-generated.

Kourouma: Language is more than words

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