As France conceded measures of representation to its colonies, MESAN won local elections and he gained influence in Oubangui-Chari's government, though his reputation suffered when he backed an unsuccessful economic scheme.

[1] He was born around the year 1910[2][a] to a family of farmers in Bobangui, a large M'Baka village in the Lobaye basin located at the edge of the equatorial forest some 80 kilometres (50 mi) southwest of Bangui.

[11] His uncle, whose son, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, would later crown himself as the Emperor of the Central African Empire, was beaten to death at a colonial police station as a result of his alleged resistance to work.

[24] Boganda believed that the church was providing him with insufficient support and, by the mid-1940s, was in conflict with the local government administrator and felt he was facing racial discrimination from colonial officials, settlers, and some missionaries.

[26] Boganda decided to compete, and on 10 November 1946, he was elected deputy for Oubangui-Chari,[27] becoming the first native Oubanguian to join the assembly after winning 10,846 votes—almost half of the total votes cast—and defeating three other candidates, including the incumbent, François Joseph Reste, who had formerly served as the Governor-General of French Equatorial Africa.

[3] He arrived in Paris attired in his clerical garb and introduced himself to his fellow legislators as the son of a polygamous cannibal,[28] probably in a deliberate attempt to project a personal aura of omnipotence.

[34] He proposed several measures aimed at reforming communal land ownership and ensuring the prohibition of forced labour, but his serious attacks on French colonial policy upset the other deputies and as a result his ideas were never incorporated into the parliamentary agenda.

[36] In an attempt to improve Oubanguian farmers' incomes, spur colonial reform,[37] and form a political organisation for himself, in 1948 he launched a co-operative project, the Société Coopérative Oubangui, Lobaye, Lesse (SOCOULOLE),[36] which aimed to provide food, clothing, lodging, medical care, and education.

[44] Rumours began to circulate of his supposed invulnerability and supernatural powers,[45] and at one point later in his career a large crowd waited on the shore of the Ubangi River to see him walk over the water (he did not appear).

[40] Drawing on the support of government workers, clerks, and Free French veterans of World War II, the party sought to take credit for colonial reforms, but failed to generate popular traction.

Boganda refused to see him due to his leadership of the party, but de Gaulle refrained from taking a public stance on the politics in Oubangui-Chari,[55] a move which was interpreted as an expression of disapproval of the local RPF's tactics.

[57] Once word reached Brazzaville, the colonial authorities began mobilising troops to march on Berbérati, and Oubangui-Chari Governor Louis Sanmarco pleaded with Boganda to accompany him to the locale and intervene.

[60] Addressing the Grand Council of French Equatorial Africa, he complimented Sanmarco and declared, "Oubangui-Chari has embarked on a positive undertaking at last, after years of negative grievances and sterile struggles, and a better future is ahead".

[66] In a speech before the Territorial Assembly, Boganda suggested that the French administrators should leave and Oubanguians could "curse their shameful memory for ever", but also noted that it would take several years to train African personnel to replace them.

[67] He softened his stance a few days later while addressing the Grand Council, suggesting the colonies needed "a new form of administration" and proposing the transformation of districts into "rural communities" with trusted officials from the existing bureaucracy serving as directors of each.

This was both to secure Oubangui-Chari's commercial relations with southern Chad—which was facing strain due to competition from Cameroon—and to satisfy private firms that sought a large state contract to make up for the decline in foreign investment driven by uncertainties in the territory's political future.

[68] Boganda believed that it would only be reasonable to embark on the railway project if Oubanguian economic output was greatly increased, so he requested that Guérillot draw up a programme for improving production and raising the standard of living.

[69] Guérillot proposed a large scheme totaling four billion Central African CFA francs in expenditures to greatly increase the cultivation of coffee trees, cotton, and ground-nuts.

[72][71] Facing skepticism in the press and a measure of isolation for earlier excluding Antoine Darlan—Oubangui-Chari's representative to the French Union—from MESAN, Boganda traveled throughout the territory to try to allay peasants' fears and exhort them to work.

[81] A referendum was to be held in each colony in order to determine its support for the new constitution and joining the community; de Gaulle warned that while a negative vote would grant a territory immediate independence, it would also lead to the termination of all French aid.

[83] On 30 August Boganda told MESAN leaders he supported an affirmative vote in favour of the constitution,[80] and he subsequently traveled around Oubangui-Chari to tell the people that the French would remain slightly longer "to set right the ravages of colonisation".

[86] He stressed the urgency of accomplishing this as quickly as possible, saying, "The Central African Republic must be built today, for tomorrow it will be too late [...] Chad and Oubangui-Chari will surely be solicited by other voices and other means".

[87] In a speech, Boganda revealed he envisioned the Central African Republic as a step in creating a larger United States of Latin Africa:[86] Next we have to examine the question of the right bank of the Congo [river].

In late November the French High Commissioner convened a meeting of the equatorial leaders in Brazzaville and told them that each territorial assembly was to independently ratify its referendums and finalise its decision to adhere to the new constitution.

[96] The text was largely borrowed from the French constitution, though Boganda had some influence over the wording of the preamble[97] and pushed for the inclusion of a provision that allowed the country to cede its sovereignty to a wider union.

Boganda then set about creating extensive administrative reforms, including the establishment of rural and urban municipalities, the creation of district councils with broad authority, and the institution of mutual development societies.

[95] Historian Gérard Prunier wrote that "the probability of foul play was very high", noting, "The whites who worked for what was left of the Grandes Compagnies Concessionaires hated Boganda, who had been instrumental in finally getting compulsory labor outlawed in 1946.

[122] Mythical perceptions of Boganda's invulnerability persisted after his death,[17] and his presence in Central African collective memory remains politically potent, serving as a unifying element among both the country's elite and the general populace.

[125] Historian Georges Chaffard described Boganda as "the most prestigious and the most capable of Equatorial political men",[104] while Prunier called him "probably the most gifted and most inventive of French Africa's decolonization generation of politicians".

[126] Historian Brian Titley suggested that Boganda's death "robbed the country of a charismatic leader" able to maintain legitimacy and in the long term facilitated General Bokassa's overthrow of Dacko and subsequent military takeover in 1966.