Alpha Oumar Konaré

Alpha Oumar Konaré, fourth son of a Fula homemaker, was born in Kayes, Mali, where he went to primary school. He went on to attend Bamako's Lycée Terrasson des Fougères, the Collège de Maristes of Dakar, Senegal, the Collège Moderne of Kayes and, between 1962 and 1964, the École Normale Secondaire of Katibougou. He completed his advanced studies in history at the École Normale Supérieure of Bamako (1965–1969), at the University of Warsaw between 1971 and 1975 and, later in life, as a mid-career student at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

He began his professional career as a tutor in Kayes, then a lycée teacher at Markala and Bamako. In 1974, he did research at the Institut des Sciences Humaines du Mali, then, from 1975 to 1978, acted as head of historic patrimony and ethnography at the Ministry of Youth, Sports, Arts, and Culture. In 1980, he was named researcher at the Institut Supérieur de Formation en Recherche Appliquée (I.S.F.R.A), and Professor at the History/Geography department at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Bamako. In the course of his career, he headed several professional organizations, including the Association of Historians and Geographers of Mali, the West African Association of Archaeologists, and the Union of West African Researchers. Between 1981 and 1992, Konaré served as a consultant for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Between 1989 and 1992 he was president of ICOM (International Council of Museums).

Konaré was involved in politics as early as the age of twenty, when he was elected the 1967 Secretary General of the Sudanese Union/African Democratic Rally (US-RDA, the party of President Modibo Keïta) of the École Normale Supérieure of Bamako.

Following the coup d'état of General Moussa Traoré, he became an activist for the Marxist-Leninist, clandestine Malian Party for Work (Parti malien du travail, or PMT).

In 1978, however, he accepted a post in Moussa Traoré's government as Minister of Youth, Sports, Arts, and Culture. Though he resigned in 1980, his term was marked by the formation of many Malian sports organizations. He went on to found and direct the cultural review "Jamana" in 1983, as well as the cultural cooperative of the same name. In 1989 he also founded the daily newspaper Les échos, and in 1991 began "Radio Bamakan," Mali's first free radio station.