Kémi Séba

Kémi Séba (French-language version of Egyptian for "black star"),^[1] born Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi (9 December 1981), is a Pan-Africanist political leader, activist, writer and geopolitical journalist, known for his opposition to Françafrique and imperialism in the 21st century.^[2] Since August 2024 he serves as advisor to Abdourahamane Tchiani, the leader of the incumbent military junta in Niger.

Kémi Séba in 2007

He initially gained prominence as the leader of the black power,^[3] afrocentric, Black antisemitic group Ka tribe, which was dissolved by the French government in 2006.^[4] He was then arrested and sentenced several times on related charges and continued antisemitic comments, being released from prison in 2008. After this, he converted to Islam and took on leadership positions in the anti-Zionist MDI and the US-based New Black Panther Party.^[5][6]

In 2011 he moved to Senegal, and from 2013 onwards he became a geopolitical analyst on several West African televisions^[7] and speaker on Pan-Africanism in African universities.^[2] In 2015 he founded the NGO Urgences Panafricanistes and became a prominent figure in the opposition to the economic influence of France in African countries, seen as a neocolonial phenomenon.^[8] He initiated the demonstrations against the CFA franc which took place in January 2017 in several French-speaking African countries.^[9][10][11] Since August 2024 he serves as advisor to Abdourahamane Tchiani, the leader of the incumbent military junta in Niger.^[8]

Although he is considered highly controversial in the western hemisphere (he has been repeatedly denounced by the French government for racial hatred, antisemitism and ties to Iran and pro-Russian network Wagner Group formerly headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin^[12][13] ), he is in Africa and in the Caribbean a popular and a very important figure in modern Pan-Africanism and opposition to neocolonialism in Africa.^[14]

Origin

Capo Chichi was born in Strasbourg to immigrant parents from Benin.^{[1][note 1]} He joined the US-based Nation of Islam (NOI) as an eighteen-year-old, and later formulated his own ideology while visiting Egypt in his twenties.^[15] As a result of this process, he took the nom de guerre Kémi Séba and became the spokesperson of the Parti Kémite (Kemite Party), which was founded in 2002 and inspired by Khalid Abdul Muhammad.^[16][17]

Educational background

Kemi Seba is known for having an atypical educational background^[18] .

Kemi Seba was in high school, a student in the science section, before starting to skip classes, and to hang around the streets of the suburbs of Paris, in the Afro-ghettos, to the great displeasure of his parents. He will finally resume evening classes at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris X Nanterre, from 2000 to 2002, obtaining his diploma in capacity in law , with honors, and becoming top of his class, being 1st out of 200 students in the first year. He will then leave the university to devote himself strictly to his ideological training through political activism. It was not until 2011, that he will resume university studies, this time in political philosophy and research methodology, following from 2011 to 2015 an accelerated training in philosophy under the direction of the renowned Gabonese philosopher, Grégoire Biyogo, at the ICAD ( Cheik Anta Diop Institute) of Libreville.At the end of this process, concluded once again with distinction,Kemi Seba was made researcher in philosophy within the same institute.^[19]

In April 2025, Kemi Seba was awarded an honorary doctorate in political science by the Congolese University Bel Campus, for his ideological impact on Pan-Africanism in the 21st century, in Africa and the Caribbean.^[20]

Spiritual background

Kemi Seba's spiritual journey is rooted in a deeply dialectical^[21] approach. Indeed, after having begun his religious process by joining a pro-Black heterodox Islam in 1999 via the Nation of Islam^[22] (which would constitute the thesis of his spiritual path), he would evolve from 2002 towards what would become the antithesis of his journey, in this case his conversion to Afrocentric Kemitism^[23] (which is characterized by a hostility towards revealed religions, a desire to return to the cosmogonic and spiritual origins of African peoples with Egypt as a spiritual foundation, and a Black supremacist prism).

A few years later, in 2008, he reached the synthesis of his spiritual trajectory when he discovered in prison the writings of the French metaphysician Rene Guenon^[24]. These latter, which deal with the primordial tradition, allowed Kemi Seba to reconcile in a metaphysical sense, his relationship to revealed religions and to Kemitism, finally seeing in these two apparently antagonistic principles, a common root (the primordial tradition) and therefore de facto, a complementarity rather than an opposition. He also abandoned his supremacist vision, preferring from then on, to integrate an ethno-differentialist perception of peoples, while valuing the primordiality of black peoples, by their first existence in history.

Now a perennialist, he rejoined the Nation of Islam in 2010, hoping in vain to promote the analytical framework of the Primordial Tradition school within the organization. He eventually left the organization permanently in 2013, subsequently becoming interested in the study of African spiritualities and their various initiatory processes from a strictly perennialist perspective^[25]. In this sense, he became initiated into Vodoun in 2013, thus paving the way for the African current of the Primordial Tradition school, which he conceptualized under the title of his eponymous book "Philosophy of Fundamental Pan-Africanity". This current is intended to be a body of metaphysical reflections, advocating the unity of Black people of all spiritual faiths. A fundamental Pan-Africanity that argues that the different religions adopted by Black people are like multiple branches of a tree whose absolute root is the Primordial Tradition.

In summary, Kemi Seba was therefore a follower of the Nation of Islam, then of its antithesis via Afrocentric Kemitism, before concluding his spiritual quest by the synthesis of these two currents, via the school of primordial tradition in its African meaning, conceptualized under the name of Philosophy of fundamental pan-Africanity^[26]

Tribu KA

In December 2004, Capo Chichi founded the Parisian political group Tribu Ka, which promotes black identity and has been accused of racism against Jews.^[27][4] The group said it followed the ideology of the American NOI leader, Louis Farrakhan.^[28][29] They have also been described as proponents of a mix of antisemitic Kemetism and Guénonian Islam.^[30] The group's name is an abbreviation for 'The Atenian Tribe of Kemet'.^[17]

In a May 2006 demonstration, twenty or more Tribu Ka members marched along the Rue des Rosiers (in the Marais, a Jewish neighborhood) shouting antisemitic slogans and threatening pedestrians.^[28][29][31] Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sent a letter to Justice Minister Pascal Clément saying Tribu Ka could be indicted for racist incitement. SOS Racisme and the Union des étudiants juifs de France also called for Tribu Ka to be banned. Clément opened an investigation.^[27] The Ministry of Interior dissolved Tribu Ka on 26 July 2006, but it reformed in Sarcelles under the name Génération Kémi Séba.^[27][4][32] During the trial of Youssouf Fofana, the leader of the ethnic gang Les Barbares that murdered Ilan Halimi, Capo Chichi had sent an intimidating e-mail message to various Jewish associations.^[17]

Imprisonment

Capo Chichi was arrested in September 2006 for making allegedly antisemitic posts on his website, and again in February 2007 after he called a public official "Zionist scum." After the initial court hearing in 2006, supporters chanted, "The judge is a Zionist, the client is a Zionist, the decision will be Zionist." In February 2007, a French court near Paris sentenced Capo Chichi, the self-described "militant defender of the dignity of Black people " to five months imprisonment for criminal contempt of the law.^[32][33] In April 2008, a Parisian court verdict determined Génération Kémi Séba was the reconstitution of the dissolved group Tribu Ka, and sentenced Capo Chichi to a one-year prison sentence with suspension.^[34]

In June 2009, Brice Hortefeux, Minister of the Interior, ordered the dissolution of the group Jeunesse Kémi Séba, founded to replace Génération Kémi Séba.^[35][36]

MDI

After his release from prison in July 2008, Capo Chichi announced that he had converted to Islam.^[37] In March 2008, he became the secretary general of Mouvement des damnés de l'impérialisme (MDI, "Movement of Those Damned By Imperialism"). MDI retains close ties with the Shia paramilitary Lebanese-based group Hezbollah in their anti-Zionist campaigns.^[38] In June 2009, MDI announced that Holocaust denier Serge Thion had joined the movement.^[39] Inside the MDI, neo-nazi blogger Boris Le Lay was "in charge of external relations for the Europe zone".^[40]

New Black Panther Party

In April 2010, Malik Zulu Shabazz, leader of the US-based New Black Panther Party (NBPP), appointed Capo Chichi the party's representative in France and gave him the nom de guerre Kemiour Aarim Shabazz.^[41] In July 2010, Capo Chichi left his position as the president of MDI but continued as the head of the francophone branch of NBPP.^[42]

Activity in Africa

In 2011, he left the NBPP and moved to Senegal, where he continued his political activism and became a lecturer in African universities and, from 2013, a political columnist in various African television channels. This earned him a certain popularity among the French-speaking African youth, who considered him as a defender of African sovereignty.

Originally close to the Nation of Islam, he eventually joined Voodoo in 2014, which he links to the work of the metaphysician René Guénon about the perennialism as he explains in his latest book Free Africa or death.

He was the initiator of the demonstrations against the CFA franc who took in several French-speaking African countries.^[9] In January 2018 , he was elected as 2017 African Personality of the Year by Africanews,^[43] for his fight against French neocolonialism and the CFA Franc in Africa.

In December 2019, while accusing France of being partly responsible for terrorism in the Sahel, Kémi Séba placed himself at the disposal of the regional armies, to fight against the jihadists. He therefore proposed to the presidents of the G5 Sahel the creation of a group of "Pan-African civilian volunteers".

On 23 February 2020, Séba returned to Senegal to attend the appeal for his trial for having burned a CFA franc note. He was arrested at Blaise-Diagne airport, detained for 30 hours and then deported to Belgium. The holding of the trial was then postponed.

In October 2020, Kémi Séba went to Côte d'Ivoire to request a postponement of the 2020 presidential election, following a third term of Alassane Ouattara.

In October 2021, three years after being turned away at Conakry airport, Kemi Seba was allowed to enter Guinean territory from where he met Mamady Doumbunya.

In February 2024, the French authorities initiated a procedure for loss of French nationality against Kemi Seba, Kemi Seba also holds Beninese nationality. French authorities accused Kemi Seba of spreading anti-French sentiment across West Africa.^[44]

On July 9, 2024, By virtue of a decree published in the Official French Journal, Kemi Seba was stripped of his French nationality. Kémi Seba had earlier published a video online in which he burned a document that he claimed was his French passport.^[45]

In August 2024, he announced via X that he had been granted a diplomatic passport by Nigerien authorities. He posted a picture of the purported diplomatic passport bio data page. His claims were confirmed by the French secret service during his last arrest in Paris in October 2024.

In January 2025, Séba announced that he would run for President of Benin in the 2026 Beninese presidential election after denouncing the incumbent president Patrice Talon.^[46]

On April 15, 2025, Kemi Seba was awarded the rank of Doctor Honoris Causa in political science by Bel Campus University in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa).^[47]

On March 31, 2025, Kemi Seba was arrested as he was preparing to hold a press conference.^[48] On May 3, 2025, he hosted a conference dedicated to denouncing the CFA franc and challenging the agreements inherited from colonization in Central Africa.^[49]

In June 2025, Kemi Seba is organizing a tour in Gabon against the CFA Franc, and cooperation agreements in Africa and France.^[50]

Geopolitical connections

In March 2015, Kémi Séba was received by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to talk about the need to collaborate between countries of the Third World confronted with Western imperialism.^[51]

In December 2017, he was invited to Moscow by the Russian nationalist intellectual Aleksandr Dugin to talk about the need to create a geopolitical alliance between the Pan-Africanist and Eurasian movements to join forces against hegemony of the West, and consolidate the political project of a multipolar world.^[52]

In March 2022, he was invited by the Executive Secretary of the Russia-Africa Forum: What's Next? On MGIMO base Igor Tkachenko gave a lecture on the future of Africa in the world economic system, supporting the position of President Vladimir Putin on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In 2022, he was received by the Chairman of the Transitional Government of Mali.

On October 24–26, 2022, he arrived in Moscow again upon the invitation of Igor Tkachenko to participate in the Second Youth Forum "Russia-Africa: what's next?" On the basis of MGIMO of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. On the fields of which Kemi Ceba delivered his sensational "Moscow" speech and was received by representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry and other authorities.

On March 12 2023, a televised intervention on the French Parliamentarian channel was cancelled due to accusations him being an asset for Russian propaganda. ^[53]

Séba has been financially supported by Russian oligarch and mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.^[54][55][56]

On July 9, 2024, Séba was stripped of his French nationality.^[57]

In May 2025, Kemi Seba declined all offers of political alliances with lawyer Robert Bourgi.^[58]

Books

• Supra-négritude, Fiat-Lux éditions 2013, ISBN 979-1091157018
• Black Nihilism, 2014
• Obscure Époque – fiction géopolitique, 2016^[59]
• Philosophie de la panafricanité fondamentale – Édition Fiat Lux, 2023 ISBN 9791091157391

Notes

1. Another source says that Capo Chichi's parents were from the Ivory Coast and Haiti. Reiss, "Laugh Riots", The New Yorker, 2007 (see below.)