Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Amadou Hampâté Bâ (, 1900/1901 – 15 May 1991) was a Malian writer, historian, and ethnologist. He was an influential figure in the twentieth-century African literature and cultural heritage. A champion of Africa's oral tradition and traditional knowledge, he is remembered for his 1960 address to the UNESCO General Conference in which he urged the preservation of Africa's oral traditions, declaring: "I consider the death of each of these traditionalists as the burning of an unexploited cultural fund" ("Je considère la mort de chacun de ces traditionalistes comme l'incendie d'un fond culturel non exploité"). A later formulation using the word bibliothèque emerged during a 1962 UNESCO Executive Board exchange.

Biography Amadou Hampâté Bâ was born to an aristocratic Fula family in Bandiagara, the largest city in Dogon territory, and the capital of the precolonial Masina Empire. At the time of his birth, the area was known as French Sudan as part of the colonial French West Africa, which was formally established a few years before his birth. After his father's death, he was adopted by his mother's second husband, Tidjani Amadou Ali Thiam of the Toucouleur ethnic group. He first attended a Qur'anic school run by Tierno Bokar, a dignitary of the Tijaniyyah brotherhood, then transferred to a French school at Bandiagara, and then to one at Djenné. In 1915, he ran away from school and rejoined his mother at Kati, where he resumed his studies.

In 1921, he turned down entry into the école normale in Gorée. As a punishment, the governor appointed him to Ouagadougou, to a role he later described as that of "an essentially precarious and revocable temporary writer". From 1922 to 1932, he held several posts in the colonial administration in Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, and from 1932 to 1942 in Bamako. In 1933, he took a six months leave to visit Tierno Bokar, his spiritual leader.

In 1942, he was appointed to the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (IFAN — the French Institute of Black Africa) in Dakar, thanks to the benevolence of Théodore Monod, its director. At IFAN, he made ethnological surveys and collected traditions. For 15 years he devoted himself to research, which would later lead to the publication of his work L'Empire peul de Macina (The Fula Empire of Macina). In 1951, he obtained a UNESCO grant, enabling him to travel to Paris and meet with the intellectuals from Africanist circles, notably Marcel Griaule.

With Mali's independence in 1960, Bâ found the Institute of Human Sciences in Bamako, and represented his country at the UNESCO general conferences. In 1962, he was elected to UNESCO's executive council, and in 1966 he helped establish a unified system for the transcription of African languages.

His term in the executive council ended in 1970, and he devoted the remaining years of his life to research and writing. In 1971, he moved to the Marcory suburb of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and worked on classifying the archives of West African oral tradition, that he had accumulated throughout his lifetime, as well as writing his memoirs (Amkoullel l'enfant peul and Oui mon commandant!), both published posthumously. He died in Abidjan in 1991.

Notable works L'Empire peul du Macina (1955)—The Fula Empire of Macina

Memoirs

Amkoullel, l'enfant peul (1991)—Amkoullel, the Fula Child Oui mon commandant! (1994)—Yes, My Commander (published posthumously)