The issues of displacement, migration, and borders in Francophone West Africa will be addressed here by studying The Suns of Independence, the famous novel by Ahmadou Kourouma, from the Ivory Coast, first published in 1968. I will focus almost exclusively on the main character, Fama, a proud and “crazy Malinke,” as people around him perceive him. The issues of displacement, migration, and borders, brought about by colonialism and the first years of independence, are still pertinent today. Borders are part of all kinds of “curses brought by the suns of Independence” (35) and “invented by the devil” (91), long with colonization and district commissioners. Colonialism and the first years of independence have brought along with them a series of evils for African rural society, including the movement and displacement of populations. Fama, our Malinke, sees colonialism and independence as the same thing: independence has brought him only one thing, ruin, or worse, the “national identity card and the party membership card” (14). The politics of independence have made matters even worse. Borders were reshuffled and consolidated, according to the new ideology of nationstatehood, by African leaders. Whole segments of populations, such as the Malinke, were deprived of all political and economic power by the forces of independence. These populations fell back on a life of degradation, humiliation, and sterility, three words that the novel constantly hammers home. For example, the character Fama Doumbouya, the last legitimate descendant of the prince of Horodugu, is reduced almost to begging to survive, his cultural, political, and personal situation turned upside down, first by colonialism and then by independence.