Library Weekly

On 12 October 2014, Kenyan-born American academic, professor of African and Islamic studies, and political writer Ali Al'amin Mazrui died in Vestal, New York, at the age of 81. He is best known for the nine-part television series entitled The Africans: A Triple Heritage that he both wrote and narrated. A joint production by the BBC and PBS that was released in 1986, the series, and the book on which it is based, analyses the complex ways in which African communities exhibit a blend of three cultures: indigenous, Muslim and Western.

Mazrui was born on 24 February 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya to Swafia Suleiman Mazrui and Sheikh Al-Amin Mazrui. He grew up  grew up speaking Swahili, Arabic and English. After getting a Kenyan Government scholarship, he moved to the West and obtained his B.A. degree with Distinction from Manchester University in Great Britain in 1960, his M.A. from Columbia University in New York in 1961, and his doctorate (DPhil) from Oxford University (Nuffield College) in 1966.

Mazrui then joined Makerere University in Kampala where he was Head of the Department of Political Science, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Law. He was forced into exile in the US in 1973 and worked at Stanford University for two years before moving to the Political Science Department at the University of Michigan, where he stayed for seventeen years. In 1989, he was appointed to the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities at Binghamton University where he founded the Institute of Global Cultural Studies, of which he was the Director until he retired on 1 September 2014.

(Source: Katrien Polman on ASCL website & Wikipedia)

Selected publications

Publications on Ali Mazrui and his work

Ali A. Mazrui : reflections on and by an Africanist, Scholar and Poet : an annotated and select thematic bibliography 2003-2018. - Pietermaritzburg : Otterley Press, [2019]

Black Orwell : essays on the scholarship of Ali A. Mazrui / Seifudein Adem; Kimami Njogu. - Trenton, New Jersey : Africa World Press, 2018

Critical perspectives on culture and globalisation : the intellectual legacy of Ali Mazrui / Seifudein Adem; Kimami Njogu. - Nairobi : Twaweza Communications Ltd., 2017

Growing up in a shrinking world : how politics, culture and the nuclear age defined the biography of Ali A. Mazrui / D. Ndirangu. - Trenton, New Jersey : Africa World Press, [2017]

A giant tree has fallen : tributes to Ali Al'amin Mazrui / Seifudein Adem and others. - Grant Park : African Perspectives Publishing, cop. 2016

Publications writen by Ali Mazrui

The Political Sociology of English Language : An African Perspective / Ali A. Mazrui. - Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2019]

African institutions : challenges to political, social, and economic foundations of Africa's development / Ali A. Mazrui; Francis Wiafe-Amoako. - Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2016]

Collected essays of Ali A. Mazrui / Ali A. Mazrui; Toyin Falola. - Trenton, NJ [etc.] : Africa World Press, 2002-2004

Debating the African condition : Ali Mazrui and his critics / Alamin M. Mazrui; Willy Matunga. - Trenton, NJ [etc.] : Africa World Press [etc.], 2003-2004

General history of Africa Vol.8, Africa since 1935 / ed. Ali A. Mazrui ; ass. ed. C. Wondji. - Oxford [etc.] : Heinemann ; Paris : UNESCO ; Berkeley : University of California Press, 1993

Conversation with African Poet and Writer Ali Mazrui / Library of Congress, 2011

Timeline of fellows of the African Academy of Sciences via Wikidata and DBpedia