David Graeber, Africanist
David Graeber (1961-2020) started his career as a scholar studying Madagascar and that informed what became his popular ideas about anarchism, debt, and globalization.
Ancestors
Bill Freund: Historian, Africanist, Intellectual
Bill Freund was a Marxist historian in method, attentive to political economy and to the material underpinnings of power, while retaining a critical distance to Marxism.
Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, a healer from within
We should honor Professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba by carrying on his life's work.
Goodbye Annar Cassam
Chambi Chachage’s tribute to Annar Cassam, assistant to late President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and a key figure in anti-colonial movements.
The book of his life
Father's Day reflections for the time of COVID-19.
Binyavanga Wainaina’s writing was enough
On the one year anniversary of his death, we remember Kenyan writer and commentator Binyavanga Wainaina.
The world has lost a giant of development economics
Thandika Mkandawire (1940-2020) bravely stood up for social policies and the developmental state.
A people cannot bid farewell to their history
Remembering Marcelino dos Santos, founder of Frelimo and the former Vice President of the People’s Republic of Mozambique.
An indispensable figure of African photography
Homage to Santu Mofokeng, photographer of quotidian black life in South Africa.
The short, white woman with a South African accent
Urdang reflects her long friendship with fellow political exile Jennifer Davis, the anti-apartheid activist and changemaker.
Reenchanting Teju Olaniyan
Among the many legacies of Teju Olaniyan’s teaching and writing would be a project to not only speak in the ideological name of Africa, but to redistribute the power of speaking in that name.
Ben Turok’s commitment to liberation, non-racialism and equality
Turok, who died at 92, was committed to fighting for the ideals of the left in South Africa. It is worth reviewing what his contribution to these ideals were in the final chapter of his life.
Jennifer Davis: Fearless and visionary
Davis, who died at 84 on October 15th, was a prominent leader of the anti-apartheid movement in the US and an analytical thinker and visionary.
Reading John Mbiti from Uganda
The late Mbiti is praised for indigenizing Christianity. However, his veneration of "African" tradition also served as theological justification for authoritarian rule.
A living monument of the struggle
The passing of American economist Ann Seidman has again spotlighted the impacts of committed scholarship on Africa.
The beautyful ones
A personal reflection, by the daughter of a fighter in Zimbabwe's Second Chiumurenga, on the death of President Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe and the tradition to not speak ill of the dead
What is the proper way for young Zimbabweans to remember Robert Mugabe's legacy?
How Africa shaped Immanuel Wallerstein
Africa and its peoples were central to the great Immanuel Wallerstein's intellectual development and political activism.
The emptiness of an ending
With Mugabe's death, might there be space for a new self-definition as a nation in Zimbabwe, as a broad family of nationals, with a shared national project?
Apartheid, anthropology and Johnny Clegg
All that French marketing schtick aside about "the white Zulu," Johnny Clegg was a real one.