ABSTRACT
It was during the late 1940s in the famous Présence Africaine, the influential journal that Diop helped to establish, that he first expounded his Afrocentric ideas on the ‘African origin of civilisation’ and the significance of Ancient Egypt as a profoundly African civilisation. Diop’s ideas had a major influence on the anti-colonial thinking of other Francophone African students, and undermined the racist ideas then prevalent that Africa had no history and the French colonialist theory of assimilation. At the same time Diop also began to propose the need for a federation of African states, ‘from the Sahara to the Cape’, if Africa’s independence was to be established and
consolidated. Underpinning this pan-African unity was Diop’s belief in African cultural unity and the important role that historical and linguistic research could play in developing this unity.
