Global Africa: Profiles in Courage, Creativity, and Cruelty
Adekeye Adebajo, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria
with Samar Al-Bulushi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, as respondent
Adekeye Adebajo shares highlights from his book Global Africa: Profiles in Courage, Creativity, and Cruelty (Jacana 2023; Routledge 2024). This book of 100 essays written over the last three post-apartheid decades provides profiles of pan-African figures, mostly from Africa and its diaspora in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean. It covers the most important figures of “Global Africa” - and some important non-African personalities - encompassing diverse historical and political figures, technocrats, activists, writers, public intellectuals, musical and film artists, and sporting figures. These include: Cecil Rhodes, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin, Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Margaret Thatcher, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Adebayo Adedeji, Martin Luther King Jr., Wangari Maathai, Ruth First, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Bell Hooks, Buchi Emecheta, Ali Mazrui, Edward Said, Angela Davis, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Burna Boy, Asa, Sidney Poitier, Muhammad Ali, Pelé, Eusébio, Diego Maradona, Viv Richards, Jonah Lomu, Hakeem Olajuwon, and many others.
Co-sponsored by: Center for African Studies, Othering & Belonging Institute
11/29/2023
