Reimagining Pan-Africanism

As a dramatist, poet, novelist, essayist, political activist and professor, Wole Soyinka is perhaps Africa’s most brilliant cultural ambassador and critic, and a notable commentator on world affairs. He was the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1986) and two of his works, the play Death and the King’s Horseman and Aké: Years of Childhood, an autobiographical account of his childhood, have recently been listed in Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. He holds an honorary doctorate from Yale University, and has served as visiting professor at Yale and Cambridge universities. He has spent long periods in political exile, but is now living again in Nigeria.

Bereket Habte Selassie is an award-winning distinguished academic who teaches African Studies and Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written over ten books and scores of articles on law, history and politics, including two memoirs. His first major work of fiction is a novel, Riding the Whirlwind (1993). He is gathering material for another novel, which he plans to finish by 2013. A committed Pan-Africanist, he was invited to deliver the Nyerere Distinguished Lecture for 2011 at the University of Dar es-Salaam. The two lectures will be published early next year by Mkuki na Nyota Publishers.

Professor Thandika Mkandawire is the first to hold the Chair in African Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is also the Olof Palme Professor for Peace with the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm. He has been the Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and Director of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen and has taught at the Universities of Stockholm and Zimbabwe. His research interests include development theory, economic policy, development and social policy in developing countries, and the political economy of development in Africa.