African Democratic Assembly

African Democratic Assembly 

(Rassemblement Démocratique Africain; RDA), organization founded in October 1946 at a congress of African representatives of the countries of French West Africa in the city of Bamako; it united democratic forces of all the colonies of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa that were struggling for the liberation of the peoples of Africa. It maintained close contact with the French Communist Party. By 1949 it numbered 1 million members. The Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Senegalese Union, the Sudanese Union, the Democratic Party of Guinea, the Niger Progressive Party, the Dahomey Democratic Union, the Union of Peoples of Cameroon, and some other parties joined the RDA as territorial sections. Under intensifying repression during the early 1950’s, some leaders of the RDA embarked on a path of collaboration with the colonial authorities, which led to a split in the RDA. With the liquidation of French West Africa in 1958–59 and the birth of independent African states, the sections of the RDA formed independent parties, and the RDA was transformed into a purely formal association. The organization’s section in the Republic of the Ivory Coast is considered its nucleus.