Ernest Wamba dia Wamba (; 1942 – July 15, 2020) was a prominent Congolese academic and political theorist who became a commander of the Kisangani faction of the rebel Rally for Congolese Democracy during the Second Congo War. Early life Wamba dia Wamba was born in Sundi-Lutete, Bas-Congo Province. He was raised in Swedish mission schools and grew into adulthood in the period when the prophetism of Simon Kimbangu and the political agitation for independence by the Association des Bakongo (ABAKO) was reaching its peak. When ABAKO split, he favoured the faction of Daniel Kanza. Upon graduation from secondary school, he was one of three students awarded scholarships by the African-American Institute to study in the United States. He went to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where Wamba wrote his honors dissertation on the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. He later went on to graduate studies at Claremont before teaching at Brandeis University, where he was associated with Peter F. Drucker. He went on to teach at Harvard University. During his period in the U.S., Wamba dia Wamba married an African-American woman and was involved in the Civil Rights Movement through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee . Once the period of decolonization began in Africa, he joined the supporting committees of various US-based pan-Africanist movements. In 1980, he accepted a position as Professor of History at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. In 1981, while visiting his parents' village in Zaire, he was arrested by the government of Mobutu Sese-Seko for possessing a paper he had authored that was deemed 'subversive', and was detained for one year. He continued his role as a prominent figure in both academia and political circles in Africa. He is the former president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) as well as the founder and president of the philosophy club at the University of Dar es Salaam. He was an expert in the Palaver (politics) and other indigenous forms of African democracy. He participated in the Sovereign National Conference, held from 1990 through 1992 in Zaire. In 1997 he co-authored with Jacques Depelchin, the African Declaration Against Genocide. In December 1997, Wamba was named a recipient of the Dutch Prince Claus Award for Culture and Development. The announcement of the award cited his "scholarly contribution to the development of African philosophy and for sparking off