Ali Mazrui dies at 81

       

  Credit: Guardian 

RENOWNED Kenyan academic, Ali Mazrui, died Monday in the United States (U.S.) at the age of 81, after several months of illness.

   The late Mazrui delivered The Guardian’s eighth Anniversary Lecture in 1991 titled, “The Black Woman and The Problem of Gender: Her Trials, Triumphs and Challenges.’’

   Of his death, Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said that Africa has been robbed of one of its greatest scholars, noting that Mazrui had been a “towering” academic whose “intellectual contributions played a major role in shaping African scholarship.”

   Mazrui was a professor at the Binghamton University in New York at the time of his death. According to the Chairman of Kenya’s Muslims for Human Rights group, Khelef Khalifa, his body will be flown to Kenya for burial, as “his nephew, Alamin Mazrui, has confirmed that the professor’s wish was to be buried in Kenya.”

   Mazrui was a leading pan-Africanist, whose academic research focused on African politics, North-South relations and political Islam. He had authored numerous books, including The Africans: A Triple Heritage and Christianity and Islam in Africa’s Political Experience: Piety, Passion and Power. 

   In 2005, the U.S. journal, Foreign Policy, and British journal, Prospect, listed him among the world’s top 100 public intellectuals. 

   Born on February 24, 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya, Mazrui studied in Columbia University, University of Oxford, University of Manchester, Nuffield College, Oxford. He is survived by wife and six children.