Mamadou Dia

Mamadou Dia (18 July 1910 – 25 January 2009) was a Senegalese politician who served as the first Prime Minister of Senegal from 1957 until 1962, when he was forced to resign and was subsequently imprisoned amidst allegations that he was planning to stage a military coup to overthrow President Léopold Sédar Senghor. Of rural origin, Mamadou Dia was born in Khombole, in the Thies Region of Senegal, on 18 July 1910. His father, a veteran turned into a policeman, played a key role in transmitting the faith of Sufi Islam to his son and was an important example of rectitude for Dia. A former pupil of the Blanchot elementary school in Saint-Louis, Dia began his more formal education in a Quranic school and transitioned into receiving a Western education at the École William Ponty, the principal training ground of the elite in French Africa in the 1920s and 30s. Eventually, he pursued graduate studies in economics at the University of Paris. Before entering politics in the early 1940s (becoming motivated to so only after the Vichy regime collapsed) , he worked as a journalist, teacher and school director. In his book “Africa, the Price of Freedom” (2001, edited by L'Harmattan) he stated his belief that he was born (according to some papers belonging to his father he had found) in July 1911, not 1910. A teacher altered official documents to allow him to pass the competition for the William Ponty school, as he would have been too young to compete otherwise. Dia embarked on his political career in 1947 as a leader in the Grand Council of the Afrique occidentale française (AOF) and as Secretary General of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc (BDS) from 1948. He served in the French Senate from 1948 to 1956 and as deputy in the French National Assembly from 1956 to 1958, sitting with the parliamentary group of Overseas Independent (IOM). With Senghor, Dia formed the African Convention Party (PCA) in January 1957 from the BDS.