Conclusion

This conclusion provides a critical commentary of the main findings of this study by focussing on the specific contributions of its principal authors and the political and intellectual context in which they rose to prominence in the 1945-1960 period. More specifically, it also returns to the anti-colonial agenda of Georges Balandier and Cheikh Anta Diop and concludes that, despite the novelty of their claims, they remained dependent on the ‘colonial library’. This conclusion also identifies the main epistemological obstacles faced by post-war anti-colonial scholars and some of their successors up to the twenty-first century (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Duncan Campbell and Felwine Sarr). It is argued here that more than sixty years after the political decolonization of sub-Saharan African the north-south axis that had presided over the colonial management of the world is still a major global force.