Ahmed Sékou Touré
Touré is the only man on this list who came by his understanding of socialism in a more practical way rather than an academic sense.
At the age of 23, the future Guinean president was the general secretary of the Post and Telecommunications Workers’ Union in French Guinea. He was also a founding member of the Federation of Workers’ Union of Guinea, which was linked to the World Federation of Trade Unions.
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When he began calling for the independence of Guinea, Touré was well-versed in what Marx and Lenin had to say about the production of material needs and nation-building.
Interestingly, Touré symbolically renounced Marxism in the face of Western pressure in the late 1970s. But his pro-worker politics are still not surpassed in post-independence Guinea.
