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“Afrikan Renaissance” is the name that is given of an intellectual movement with the purpose of expanding and promoting the ideas of Cheikh Anta Diop. The movement was founded in the early 1990s in Paris by Professor Theophile Obenga and Nuclear Physicist Cheikh M’Backe Diop the son of Cheikh Anta Diop. In 1948, Cheikh Anta Diop had called for an Afrikan Renaissance based on the values and constructs of Afrikan reality. The Afrikan Renaissance movement is thus related to the Afrocentricity movement in its determination to define Afrikan ideas and ideals from an Afrikan perspective. Furthermore, like Afrocentricity, the Afrikan Renaissance movement views ancient Kemet as the starting place for all discussions of culture and language in the Afrikan world.

Under the direction and tutelage of Theophile Obenga, the Afrikan Renaissance group in Paris organised themselves into a school devoted to teaching and publishing Afrocentric scholarship. Cheikh M’Backe Diop used his scientfic background to advaance the work of the group. The combination of the efforts and talents of Afrikan linguist, historian and philosopher Theophile Obenga and nuclear physicist Cheikh M’Backe Diop contributed to Afrikan Renaissance becoming a major instrument in the dissemination of Afrocentric ideas especially in the Franco world.