Institut Français d’Afrique Noire

IFAN (I.F.A.N., Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire or African Institute of Basic research) is a cultural and scientific institute in the nations of the former French West Africa. Founded in Dakar, Senegal in 1938 as the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (the name was changed only in 1966), it was headquartered in what is now the building of the IFAN Museum of African Arts. Its charge was to study the language, history, and culture of the peoples ruled by French colonialism in Africa.

IFAN first formed from a combination of three forces: the French colonial "Civilizing mission", the desire for more efficient Indirect rule through the understanding of African cultures, and research into the resources of the French dominion in Africa. Governors General Ernest Roume (1902–1908) and William Ponty (1908–1914) oversaw a reorganization of the French higher educational system in the colonies, and placing Georges Hardy in charge, moved the colonial administration into a model which used elements from both a "Direct", Assimilationist policy and an Indirect, rule by African proxy policy. The first required educational resources be created provided for the small minority of "assimilated" Africans, while the later required French colonial administrators be educated in the workings of African societies. To these ends, Hardy oversaw the creation of the École normale supérieure William Ponty (under the administration of Joseph Clozel), the publication Bulletin de l'Enseigement en AOF, and the Comite d'etudes historiques et scientifiques de l'AOF (1918). This last, immensely successful as a scientific journal, inaugurated what one historian has called an era of "..knowledge and control."

These imperial (or at best paternalist) scientific tools were turned on their head in a number of ways. First, the African higher education system (and the École William Ponty in particular) became the incubator for the political leaders of the independence movement. The study of African cultures, though invaluable to modern historians, did little to legitimize French rule through their Chefs du Canton, but it did provide Francophone West Africans (such as Léopold Senghor) with the materials to bolster their sense of cultural importance, as demonstrated in the Negritude movement. Finally, Europeans and Africans who opposed colonial rule came together in the years after the founding of IFAN in Dakar. IFAN was first conceived as an integration of various French colonial research systems in the early 1930s, and the vision was one of putting science to the service of the colonial project.Jules Brévié, governor of French West Africa from 1930 to 1936, wrote that "colonization needs scholars, impartial and disinterested researchers with broad vision, outside of the urgency and fire of action. He wanted a methodical research program into colonial history and African culture, and lobbied for an official scientific institute to undertake geographical, ethnographic and historical research.

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