Abstract

The text analyzes the role of the French Communist Party in the colonies of western Sub-Saharan Africa, and its relations with the largest political party of Frenchdominions on the African continent, the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), between the late 1940s and early 1950s. The relations between the two political forces are observed from the point of view of the French communists themselves: the influence of Cold War transnational dynamics on the society of French West Africa, in particular the Ivory Coast, is based on the documents kept in the archives of the Communist Party. The vision extrapolated from these papers provides a new historiographic perspective on the commitment of French communists in Africa and on some key figures on the African political landscape, such as Félix Houphouët- Boigny, RDA leader and future president of the Ivory Coast.