Ahmed Sekou Toure
Ahmed Sékou Touré led Guinea to independence in 1958 by being the only French African territory to vote no to de Gaulle, and then ruled it for twenty-six years with mounting brutality. Born in Faranah in 1922 into a poor Muslim family, he claimed descent from Samori Ture, who had resisted French conquest in the nineteenth century. He was expelled from technical school at fifteen for organising a food strike and completed his education by correspondence. He worked in the post office and built his career in the trade unions, becoming the most effective labour organiser in French West Africa and leading a successful general strike in 1953. In September 1958 de Gaulle offered France's African territories a referendum: autonomy within a French Community, or immediate independence with all support withdrawn. Touré told him that Guinea preferred poverty in freedom to riches in slavery. Guinea voted ninety-five per cent for independence. France left within months, taking equipment, destroying records and stripping public buildings. He turned to the Soviet bloc and to socialist planning, nationalising commerce and refusing the CFA franc. The economy, resting on bauxite, performed poorly. The rule became a terror state. Real and imagined plots — he announced dozens — justified mass arrest. Camp Boiro in Conakry held thousands, where prisoners were tortured and starved to death under what was called the black diet; estimates of those killed run to fifty thousand, including ministers, the UN under-secretary Diallo Telli and much of the educated class. Around a million or more Guineans fled the country. He was a genuine pan-Africanist who sheltered Kwame Nkrumah after his overthrow. He died in 1984 during heart surgery in Cleveland, and the army seized power a week later.
- Lived: 1922 CE – 1984 CE
- Nationality: Guinean
- Roles: head_of_state
