Kenyan-born Professor Ali Mazrui, who passed away Monday in Binghamton, New York at age 81, has been hailed as one of the African continent’s foremost intellectual giants alongside the late Chinua Achebe, who died last year.
At the time he passed away, Mazrui was an Albert Schweitzer professor in the humanities and the director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University.
Mazrui was born in the coastal city of Mombasa on February 24th, 1933.
He studied at Oxford University and taught at Makerere University in Uganda.
The late professor went into exile in the 1970s after his sharp criticism of then Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi and Ugandan strongman, Idi Amini.
Zimbabwean author Chenjerai Hove, who knew Mazrui personally, says Africa has lost a great intellectual.