Jean-Marc Ela

Jean-Marc Ela was enthroned Grand Prix de la mémoire of the GPLA 2018.

A vocal critic of both ecclesiastical and political institutions, Ela entered voluntary exile in Quebec after the assassination of fellow Cameroonian priest Englebert Mveng in 1995. Ela resided in Montreal, where he served as a Professor of Sociology at the University of Laval at Montreal, from 1995 until his death 26 December 2008, in Vancouver.

Interspersed between his hard-hitting theological tones, Ela produced several volumes on social sciences in Africa. He was a science-minded researcher dedicated to opening a conceptual framework to encompass and address the knowledge and the needs of his countrymen. For example, he wrote in 2001 a guide emphatically explaining the imperative African researchers have to direct new research to meeting the basic needs of the population and not only to improve industrial productions. Similarly, in several books published between 1998 and 2007, he showed the place of Africa in the world of rational science, and the necessity of high quality scientific work. In a book published in 2007, he studied and tried to explain the inseparability of knowledge and power and the importance of this for the well-being of Africa.

Jean-Marc Ela (27 September 1936 – 26 December 2008) was a Cameroonian sociologist and theologian. Working variously as a diocesan priest and a professor, Ela was the author of many books on theology, philosophy, and social sciences in Africa. His most famous work, African Cry has been called the "soundest illustration" of the spirit of liberation theology in sub-Saharan Africa. His works are widely cited as exemplary of sub-Saharan African Christian theology for their focus on contextualisation and their emphasis on community-centered approaches to theology.

Jean-Marc Ela was born on 27 September 1936 in Ebolowa, in the African nation of Cameroon. The son of a middle-class family in southern Cameroon, Ela claimed that he first began to think of theology as a discipline that should be concerned with the local needs of believers while he was studying philosophy and theology in France at the University of Strasbourg in the 1960s. He studied sociology at the University of Strasbourg as well as at the University of Sorbonne.