Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Writer, Historian & Diplomat

(1901 – 1991) · West Africa

Malian writer, oral historian, and diplomat who devoted his life to recording West African oral traditions before they were lost. He represented Mali at UNESCO in the 1960s and 1970s, and his memoir Amkoullel, l'enfant peul remains a celebrated document of pre-colonial Sahelian life. He coined the phrase that became the rallying cry for African oral history.