Prof Ali Mazrui embodied the best in our intellectual development

It is often said a prophet is not appreciated in his own home. For quite a long time this was true of Prof Ali Mazrui. Though a Kenyan, and the first to become a professor of political science in the then prestigious Makerere University, he rarely gave lectures in his own country.

When the political climate deteriorated in Uganda after Idi Amin’s coup in 1971, one would have thought that the University of Nairobi could have gone out of its way to seek out Mazrui “to come home” and help build that institution. This is how successful universities operate in the US. But that did not happen. Mazrui headed to the University of Michigan from where he was eventually snatched by the State University of New York at Binghamton. And the rest, as they say, is now history.