Alfa Ibrahim Sow, this great friend of the famous Amadou Hampaté Bâ, was a professor at the National Institute of Western Languages ​​and Civilizations (INALCO) where he co-received in 1975 with Hampaté Bâ the French language prize awarded by the Académie Française.

Born in 1935 Alfa Ibrahim SOW grew up in the large town of Dara Labé. He studied in Conakry and Dakar respectively before arriving in Paris in France where he continued his studies in linguistics and modern literature at the Sorbonne.

A great writer, Alfa Ibrahim Sow is the author of several books including the great classic “The book, the cow and the faith” in which he evokes the writers and poets of Fouta Djallon. In a pastoral society like that of the Fulɓe, the Woman and the Cow, they are not separated; we love them together since, according to legend, “God created the Cow, He created the Woman, He created the Sweater. He put the Woman behind the Cow and the Sweater behind the Woman, thus forming the inseparable trilogy.

Other works include:

• Notes on poetic processes in the literature of the Fulani of Fouta Djallon. African studies notebooks (1965)
• Remarks on derivational infixes in the Fulfulde of Fouta Djallon (1966)
• Chronicles and Stories of Fouta Djallon. Kliencksieck (1968)
• Inventory of the Amadou Hampaté Bâ Fund. Kliencksieck (1970)
• The Lode of Eternal Happiness, by Tierno Mouhammadou Samba Mombeya. Armand Colin (1971)
• The glow of the great star followed by the ritual bath. Armand Colin (1974) which he co-wrote with Amadou Hampaté Bâ, L. Kesteloot, Christiane Seydou.
• When Fuuta-Jalon became Land of Islam. Nubia Editions. (1977)
• Languages ​​and language policies in Black Africa: the experience of UNESCO. Nubia Editions (1977)
• Introduction to African culture: general aspects (1977)

He was one of the initiators with Amadou Hampate Bâ of the Bamako conference in 1966 under the aegis of UNESCO for the codification of West African alphabets, following this conference a harmonized Fulani script was adopted.

While he flourished in the cultural field, Alfa Sow returned to Guinea in the 1990s following the liberalization of the Guinean political space where he entered the political arena.

Alfa Ibrahim Sow moved on the morning of January 21, 2005 in the Guinean capital Conakry where he had settled permanently.