Lazare Ki-Zerbo, born in 1965 in Burkina Faso into a family whose maternal branch is in Mali, completed his secondary education at the Charles N’Tchoréré military Prytanée in Saint-Louis, Senegal. 

After preparatory literary classes at the Paul Valéry and Fénelon high schools in Paris, he obtained a doctorate prepared at the Husserl Archives in Paris and presented at the Faculty of Poitiers in 1994. 

He taught at the University of Ouagadougou as a part-time lecturer, while collaborating with the Programme for the Development of Medium-Sized Cities in Burkina Faso within the framework of Swiss Cooperation.  At the same time, he participated in the popular mobilization activities of the Center for African Development Studies (C.E.D.A), in relation with the International South Group Network (ISGN).    

He was then hired at the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) where he attended the two Conferences of Intellectuals from Africa and the Diaspora (CIAD) organized in Dakar in 2004 and in Salvador de Bahia in 2006. 

Since 2018, he teaches philosophy at the Bertène Juminer high school in Saint Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana. 

Vice-President of the Joseph Ki-Zerbo International Center for Africa and its Diaspora (CIJKAD) and of the Burkinabe association Dialogue without Borders (DSF), he is also active in the Pan-African Federalist Movement (MFPA). 

Lazare Ki-Zerbo has co-edited CODESRIA’s Etudes africaines de géographie par le bas and L’idéal panafricain, and two collections of texts on The Pan-Africanist Movement in the Twentieth Century (OIF) and on Joseph Ki-Zerbo at CETIM.  He has also contributed to the publication of Konomba Traoré’s book Le balafon traité de musique d’un balanfôla, by Horace Campbell on Rasta and the Resistance, a human treasure living in Burkina Faso.