At the end of the First World War, Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) globalizing strategies led it to try establishing local branches of the movement in French West Africa (FWA). Thanks to envoys from Sierra Leone, the UNIA intended to instill its ideology of Black Nationalism in French-speaking nationalists who, thanks to a high level of political awareness, already opposed their domination and exploitation by a foreign power. From these connections with the UNIA and other Black Diaspora movements, Francophone activists drew values and strategies that they made endogenous. That allowed nationalists in FWA to better circumvent the violence of the French colonial apparatus while unfolding a vision of Pan-Africanism that transcended local boundaries.

Garveyism Francophone West Africa Indigenous activism Anticilonial activism Colonial repression