Adama Samassékou (1946 – 23 February 2024) was a Malian politician. He was Minister of Education from 1993 to 2000. Samassékou also served as president of the first preparatory phase of the

World Summit on the Information Society The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a two-phase United Nations-sponsored summit on information, communication and, in broad terms, the information society that took place in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis. WSIS Forums hav ...

Life and career

Samassékou was born in 1946. He studied philology and linguistics at universities in Moscow and Paris. He was Malian Minister of Education from 1993 to 2000. He served under Prime Minister

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (; 29 January 1945 – 16 January 2022), often known by his initials IBK, was a Malian politician who served as the president of Mali from September 2013 to August 2020, when he was forced to resign in the 2020 Malian cou ...

. Samassékou was spokesperson for the Government of Mali from 1997 until 2000. Samassékou served between July 2002 and December 2003 as the president of the PrepCom of the Geneva phase of the

(WSIS). In role as chairperson of WSIS he introduced a non-paper in November 2003 to propose a new negotiating text. At one point, at least in 2002 and 2006, he served as president of the

African Academy of Languages The African Academy of Languages (ACALAN; ; or ) is a Pan-African organization founded in 2001 by Mali's then-president Alpha Oumar Konaré for the development and promotion of African languages. First established as the Mission for the Africa ...

. In a meeting before the African ministers of education he stressed the importance of using local languages in schools, underpinning this with evidence from school results from children in Mali. From 2003, he was a member of the Haut Conseil de la

Francophonie The Francophonie or Francophone world is the whole body of people and organisations around the world who use the French language regularly for private or public purposes. The term was coined by Onésime Reclus in 1880 and became important a ...

. Playing an active role in community life, Samassékou was the founding president, for Mali and Africa as a whole, of the Peoples' Movement for Human Rights Education, in association with PDHRE, and beginning on 21 October 2005, president of the International Federation of ICVolunteers. In the political sphere, he was the founding chairman of ADEMA-France. Samassékou was head of the linguistic department of the Institute of Human Sciences of Mali, then director of the National Library of Mali and adviser to the minister in charge of culture. He was later the president of the MAAYA World Network for Linguistic Diversity. In 2008 Samassékou became president of the

International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences The International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (French: ''Conseil international de la philosophie et des sciences humaines''; ICPHS/CIPSH) is a non-governmental organization within UNESCO. It embraces hundreds of learned societie ...

. He was affiliated with the organisation for a total of twelve years until 2020. In 2010, Samassékou served as one of the commissioners of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development. Samassékou made an appearance in the 2010 documentary film

Motherland A homeland is a place where a national or ethnic identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethnic natio ...

. Samassékou spoke Bamanankan (), Songhay, Fulfulde (; ), French, Russian and English. He died on 23 February 2024, at the age of 78.

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* short bio 1946 births 2024 deaths Malian pan-Africanists Government ministers of Mali 21st-century Malian people {{mali-bio-stub