François Coillard (17 July 1834 in Asnières-les-Bourges, Cher, France – 27 May 1904 in Lealui, Barotseland, Northern Rhodesia) was a missionary who worked for the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society in southern Africa.
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Khama suggested that the group could try their luck with Barotseland (the Lozi kingdom), north of the Zambezi River, where a Sotho-related language was spoken.
His letters sent “from the lands of the Matabeles”, “in the huts of the Batongas” and from “the valley of the Barotses”, were published in Brussels as a two-volume set in 1882 and 1883.
His specimens number more than 10 000 (PRE, K, SRGH) and are mainly South African, with about 500 having come from Caprivi and Barotseland in 1952.
Firstly, independent African churches such as the Ethiopian Church in Barotseland, Kitawala or the Watchtower movement and others rejected European missionary control and promoted Millennialism doctrines that the authorities considered seditious.