Alexis Kagame

Who is Alexis Kagame?

Alexis Kagame was a Rwandan Catholic priest, philosopher, linguist, historian, and poet, born on 15 May 1912 at Kiyanza into a family of Abiru, the traditional court historians of the Mwami (king) of Rwanda. Educated first at missionary schools and then at the Nyakibanda Regional Seminary, he was ordained a priest on 25 July 1941. He went on to pursue advanced studies in Rome, earning a doctorate from the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he combined Western philosophical training with Bantu-Rwandan concepts of being and cosmology. After returning to Rwanda in the late 1950s, he taught philosophy, Kinyarwanda, and history at Rwandan Catholic seminaries, and in 1967 became a professor of history at the newly founded National University of Rwanda. His major works, including "La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de l'Etre" (1956) and "Le Code des Institutions Politiques du Rwanda Precolonial" (1952), systematically recorded Rwanda's oral histories, dynastic poetry, clan structures, and political institutions, work now regarded as foundational to Rwandan ethnohistory and ethnophilosophy. He died on 2 December 1981.

Sources: Alexis Kagame, La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de l'Etre (1956) · Alexis Kagame, Le Code des Institutions Politiques du Rwanda Precolonial (1952) · Dictionary of African Christian Biography, "Kagame, Alexis"