Pan-Africanist activist Kemi Seba stripped of French nationality

He is known for his virulent anti-Western positions. The Beninese pan-Africanist activist Kemi Seba, real name Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi, born on December 9, 1981 in Strasbourg, was stripped of French nationality by a decree published on Tuesday, July 9 in France in the Official Journal, dated Monday.

“My client is very happy. He had entrusted me with a letter of renunciation [à la nationalité française] even before the procedure is initiated, and takes note” of this, reacted to the AFP the lawyer of Kemi Seba. Juan Branco for his part denounced a decision taken by the government “because of the fact [des] origins” by Kemi Seba.

In March, the prefecture of the Essonne department tried to ban a conference by this activist, who was already the subject of a procedure for the revocation of nationality, a decision suspended by the administrative court. The former leader of Tribu Ka, a small group that claimed to be anti-Semitic and advocated the separation of blacks and whites before being dissolved by the French government in 2006, has been convicted several times in France for inciting racial hatred. He is now the head of the group Urgences panafricanistes and has a certain aura on social networks.

In recent years, Kemi Seba has organized or participated in several demonstrations hostile to the CFA franc in Africa, where he has been regularly arrested, expelled or turned back, notably from Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Guinea. In France, he was accused in 2023 by Renaissance MP Thomas Gassilloud, then president of the Defense Committee of the National Assembly, of being a “relay of Russian propaganda” and to serve “a foreign power that fuels anti-French sentiment.”