Théophile Obenga

Théophile Obenga (born 1936 in the Republic of the Congo) is professor emeritus in the Africana Studies Center at San Francisco State University. He is a politically active proponent of Pan-Africanism. Obenga is an Egyptologist, linguist, and historian.

Background Obenga was born in 1936 in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.

Théophile Obenga has studied a wide variety of subjects and has obtained a wide range of degrees. His degrees include:

M.A. in Philosophy (University of Bordeaux, France) M.Ed. (University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.) M.A. in History (University of Paris, Sorbonne) Advanced studies in History, Linguistics, and Egyptology (University of Geneva, Switzerland); in Prehistory (Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Paris), and in Linguistics, Philology, and Egyptology (University of Paris, Sorbonne, and College de France) Théophile Obenga holds a Ph.D. in Letters, Arts and Humanities from Montpellier University, France. He is a member of the French Association of Egyptologists (Société Française D’Egyptologie) and of the African Society of Culture (Présence Africaine). He contributed to the United Nations Educational and Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program consecrated to writing of the General History of Africa and the Scientific and Cultural History of Humanity. He was, until the end of 1991, Director General of the Centre International des Civilisations Bantu (CICIBA) in Libreville, Gabon. He is the Director and Chief Editor of the journal Ankh. From January 28 to February 3, 1974, Obenga, Cheikh Anta Diop, and numerous professors from Egypt and Sudan were Africa's representatives to the UNESCO symposium in Cairo on "The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script".

Linguistic analysis During the 1974 UNESCO Cairo symposium, The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script, Cheikh Anta Diop and Obenga were among its participants. Adding on to Diop's African origin of ancient Egypt model, Theophile Obenga focused on linguistics. Obenga through the usage of the historical comparative method sought to prove that the Egyptian language is genetically related to the majority of the languages in Africa.

Obenga proposes three major language families for Africa:

Berber - to apply the method of historical linguistics to “Negro-African” linguistic phenomena.