Mwakikagile was born on 4 October 1949 into a
middle class Tanganyikan family at Kilimani Hospital, a government hospital in the town of
Kigoma, Western Province of
Tanganyika – what is now mainland
Tanzania – his sister Maria at a
Catholic hospital in nearby
Ujiji on 1 April 1951, his brother Lawrence at a government hospital in
Morogoro in Eastern Province, a coastal region, on 29 September 1952. Besides Kigoma and Morogoro, Tanga and Muheza, his father also worked as a medical assistant in
Kilosa, Eastern Province. And his brother Lawrence years later became a captain in the Tanzania People's Defence Forces (TPDF). His parents moved from
Tanga to Kigoma in May 1949 five months before he was born. They lived in
Muheza and Tanga where his father worked as a medical assistant in the late 1940s. His paternal grandfather Kasisika Mwakikagile who came from
Mwaya (Mwaja) in what is now
Kyela District, also lived and worked in Tanga first, then in Muheza, years earlier in the 1930s. He died in Muheza in 1937 and was buried at Power Station, Muheza, Eastern Province, the year after his son Elijah started school in 1936 in Standard One at
Tukuyu Primary School in
Rungwe District in the Southern Highlands Province also simply known as Southern Highlands. His son Elijah Mwakikagile was also born in Kyela – Lwangwa, Busale ward – but grew up in Rungwe District of which Kyela District was once a part. His grandson Godfrey who lived in different parts of Tanganyika since birth also spent some of his early years in Rungwe District. He also lived in Kyela – Kandete, Itope ward – for some time when he was a child, according to his autobiographical writings. Godfrey's paternal grandmother Laheli Kasuka Mwaibanje, who also once lived with her husband in Kyela where their son Elijah was born, came from Mpata village in the ward of Kabula in Selya, Busokelo, in the eastern part of Rungwe District. Godfrey's paternal great-grandfather, the father of his grandmother Laheli Kasuka, was Kasofu Mwamwaja (Mwaibanje) from Masoko, the heartland of Rungwe District. Kasofu Mwamwaja named his daughter Kasuka (Mwakasuka) after his mother who was Godfrey's great-great-grandmother. She was named after her partenal grandmother according to custom, a practice common among members of their ehnic group. Godfrey's other paternal great-grandfather was Mwakalinga from Mwaja, Kyela. Mwakalinga was the father of his grandfather Kasisika Mwakikagile. His paternal great-grandmother, Mary Iseke (Mwaiseke) from Makete in Rungwe District who was the mother of his grandmother Laheli Kasuka, was among the earliest Christian converts in the district. She was married to Kasofu Mwamwaja. Godfrey's father Elijah Mwakikagile, who once worked at the world-famous
Amani Research Institute in Muheza District in the late forties, was a medical assistant during the British colonial era. He worked in different parts of Tanganyika and was one of the few medical assistants in the entire country of 10 million people. As Professor John Iliffe stated in his book
East African Doctors: A History of the Modern Profession, there were fewer than 300 medical assistants and fewer than 10 doctors in Tanganyika in the forties and fifties and only 12 doctors at independence from the
United Kingdom on 9 December 1961. Medical assistants underwent an intensive three-year training after finishing secondary school and worked as a substitute for doctors and were even called "madaktari" - doctors - in Kiswahili (Swahili). Godfrey's mother Syabumi Mwakikagile (née Mwambapa) who came from Kyimbila in
Rungwe District was a pupil of Tanganyika's British feminist educator, and later
Member of Parliament, Mary Hancock, who taught her at Kyimbila Girls' School in the
Southern Highlands Province in the early 1940s. Mary Hancock was a friend of Nyerere and his family since 1953 and supported him during the struggle for independence. She was also the founder of Kyimbila Girls' School. The eldest of his siblings, Mwakikagile was named Godfrey by his aunt Isabella, one of his father's younger sisters, and was baptised at an
Anglican CMS church –
Church Missionary Society – in Kigoma by Reverend Frank McGorlick from
Victoria, Australia, on
Christmas day, 1949. Godfrey's baptismal middle name is Seth. He was named Seth by his paternal great uncle Amos Mwaibanje, elder brother of his grandmother Laheli Kasuka Mwaibanje. He was brought up as a member of Kyimbila
Moravian Church whose pastor was his maternal great uncle, Asegelile Mwankemwa, younger brother of his grandmother and the first African pastor of the church. His mother Syabumi Mwambapa was born at the residence of her uncle Aseglile Mwankemwa where her mother went to live with her younger brother after her husband Mwambapa – his other family name Mwasomola – originally from Mwakaleli died in 1929 and spent some of her early years there with her mother and her cousins, the children of her uncle. The surname of her five male cousins, the children of Mwankemwa, was Mwaiseje. They had four sisters. Her mother Tungapesyaga Mapunga (Mwamapunga), Godfrey's maternal grandmother, was also buried there on the property of her younger brother Asegelile Mwankemwa when she died in 1943, according to Godfrey Mwakikagile in his books
Life under British Colonial Rule,
The African Liberation Struggle: Reflections,
Africa in Transition: Witness to Change, and in a review of his works in “Godfrey Mwakikagile: Eurocentric Africanist?” Syabumi named her son Willie soon after he was born, a prebaptismal name he does not officially use but by which he is known among his relatives and other people who knew him when he was growing up, as he has stated in his autobiographical writings and in other works including a book he wrote in 2023 about one of his secondary school teachers who was a national leader in Tanganyika's independence movement,
Julius Mwasanyagi: A forgotten African nationalist. His father was active in the
Tanganyika African National Union – TANU – which led the struggle for independence and was friends with some of the leading figures in the African independence movement. They included
John Mwakangale, his classmate from Standard One at
Tukuyu Primary School to
Malangali Secondary School, where Elijah was appointed head prefect, in the Southern Highlands Province. They came from the same area, three miles apart, in Rungwe District and knew each other since childhood. Mwakangale became one of the prominent leaders of the Tanganyika African National Union and of the
Pan-African Freedom Movement for East and Central Africa (PAFMECA), later renamed the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA), formed in
Mwanza, Tanganyika, in September 1958 under the leadership of Julius Nyerere to campaign for the independence of the countries of East and Central Africa and later
Southern Africa and which played a major role in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity almost five years later. He also became a Member of Parliament (MP) and a cabinet member in the early part of independence under Nyerere serving as Minister of Labour. John Mwakangale was also the first leader
Nelson Mandela met in newly independent Tanganyika in January 1962 – just one month after Tanganyika emerged from colonial rule – when Mandela secretly left
South Africa on 11 January to seek assistance from other African countries in the struggle against apartheid and wrote about him in his autobiography
Long Walk to Freedom. After he crossed the border and entered Bechuanaland (renamed Botswana) on 11 January, he stayed there until 19 January when he flew to Mbeya, capital of the Southern Highlands Province in southwestern Tanganyika bordering Nyasaland (renamed Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. He met with Mwakangale in Mbeya the next day on 20 January. He flew from Mbeya to Dar es Salaam on 21 January where he met with Nyerere on the same day. Tanganyika was the first independent African country Mandela visited and the first one where he sought such assistance. It was also the first country in the region to win independence and the first one he visited, as Tanzania, when he was released from prison on 11 February 1990. He travelled to other African countries using a document given to him by the government of Tanganyika which stated: “This is Nelson Mandela, a citizen of the Republic of South Africa. He has permission to leave Tanganyika and return here.” Tanganyika was chosen by African leaders to be the headquarters of all the liberation movements when they met in
Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, in May 1963 to form the
Organisation of African Unity (OAU). Sam Nujoma, the leader of Namibia's liberation movement SWAPO who became the first president of Namibia after the country won independence, travelled on a Tanzanian passport (Number 173309) for security reasons as a citizen of Tanzania using John Mwakangale's last name as Sam Mwakangale. He was given the passport after he first men John Mwakangale in 1969 when Mwakangale was Regional Commissioner of Dodoma where SWAPO had established its military training camps for its freedom fighters, authorised by President Nyerere. Other freedom fighters from the countries of southern Africa under white minority rule were also given Tanzanian passports without using their real names. Also Kanyama Chiume, who became Malawi's first Minister of Foreign Affairs, stayed for some time at John Mwakangale's house in Mwakangale's home village of Makandana on the outskirts of Tukuyu during the struggle for Malawi's independence when the country was known as Nyasaland under British colonial rule. Chiume lived in Tanganyika since his childhood. He attended primary school and secondary school in Tanganyika and spoke Swahili fluently like a native speaker of the language. He was a schoolmate and classmate of Rashidi Kawawa who became prime minister of Tanganyika and later vice president of Tanzania. Professor
John Iliffe in his book,
A Modern History of Tanganyika, described John Mwakangale as a "vehement nationalist." Mwakangale was also described as the most "anti-white" and "anti-British" member of the government and was very defensive of the interests of African workers. He did not even want American
Peace Corps in Tanzania. In his book
Reflections on Race Relations: A Personal Odyssey, Godfrey Mwakikagile wrote that John Mwakangale accused American Peace Corps of causing trouble, including attempting to overthrow the government, and bluntly stated: “These people are not here for peace, they are here for trouble. We do not want any more Peace Corps”, according to a report, "M.P. Attacks American Peace Corps," which was the main story on the front page of the Tanganyika
Standard, 12 June 1964. Other colleagues of Elijah Mwakikagile were
Austin Shaba, his co-worker as a medical assistant and earlier his classmate at the Medical Training Centre (MTC) at Tanganyika's largest hospital in the capital
Dar es Salaam later transformed into the country's first medical school who served as a Member of Parliament and cabinet member in the first independence cabinet— serving as Minister of Local Government and later as Minister of Health and Housing, and as Deputy Speaker of Parliament; Wilbard B.K. Mwanjisi, his classmate from Standard One at Tukuyu Primary School to Malangali Secondary School who became a doctor, prominent member of TANU and, before leaving government service, was president of the Tanganyika Government Servants Association, a national organisation for African government employees during colonial rule;
Jeremiah Kasambala, Elijah Mwakikagile's classmate at Malangali Secondary School who became head of the
Rungwe African Cooperative Union responsible for mobilising support from farmers to join the struggle for independence and who went on to become a cabinet member in the early years of independence—taking over the portfolio for Commerce and Cooperatives and later serving as Minister of Industries, Minerals and Energy; Robert Kaswende - he and Elijah Mwakikagile knew each other since the early 1940s - who became police chief for Rungwe District in Tukuyu soon after independence and who was later appointed by President Nyerere as deputy head of the police for the whole country and thereafter head of the National Service which became a part of the Ministry of Defence renamed Ministry of Defence and National Service; and Brown Ngwilulupi, who became Secretary General of the Cooperative Union of Tanganyika (CUT), the largest farmers' union in the country, appointed by President Nyerere. One of their teachers at Malangali Secondary School was
Erasto Andrew Mbwana Mang'enya who later became a cabinet member under President Nyerere, Speaker of Parliament, and Tanzania's Permanent Representative to the
United Nations. Brown Ngwilulupi, a member of
TANU for decades, later left the ruling party and co-founded Tanzania's largest opposition party,
Chadema, and served as its first vice-chairman under former Finance Minister and
IMF's executive director Edwin Mtei during the same period when he was a relative-in-law of Tanzania's Vice President
John Malecela who also served as Prime Minister at the same time under President
Ali Hassan Mwinyi. Ngwilulupi's daughter was married to Malecela's son. Malecela was also the first African to serve as District Commissioner (D.C.) of Rungwe District in the town of Tukuyu soon after independence in the early 1960s when Elijah Mwakikagile was a member of the Rungwe District Council where he was a councillor for many years. Brown Ngwilulupi also worked in Tukuyu during the same period with Jeremiah Kasambala at the Rungwe African Cooperative Union. Ngwilulupi and Elijah Mwakikagile came from the same village in Kyimbila four miles south of the town of Tukuyu, knew each other since childhood, and were classmates from Standard One at Tukuyu Primary School to Malangali Secondary School. Both were beneficiaries of academic acceleration and skipped some standards - class years - because they excelled in school. They later became relatives-in-law when they married cousins. Their wives, who came from the same area they did, were first cousins to each other and grew up together in the same household of Asegelile Mwankemwa. Elijah Mwakikagile was also a first cousin of one of Tanzania's first commercial airline pilots, Oscar Mwamwaja, who was shot but survived when he was a co-pilot of an
Air Tanzania plane, a
Boeing 737, that was hijacked on 26 February 1982 and forced to fly from Tanzania to Britain. Elijah's mother was an elder sister of Oscar's father Jotham Mwaibanje (also known as Mwamwaja, the other family name). Oscar's mother came from Arusha in northern Tanzania. He was born in Arusha and spent some of his early years in Arusha when his father worked in that town. In the late 1980s, Oscar became a flight instructor at a pilot training school in Zaria, northern Nigeria. He died in Zaria in 1991 and was buried there. Elijah was also a first cousin of Absalom Mwaibanje, a senior officer in Tanzania's intelligence service since the early years of Tanganyika's independence whose father, Simon Eliakim Mwaibanje, was a younger brother of Elijah's mother. Simon supported his nephew Elijah and paid for his education from Tukuyu Primary School to Malangali Secondary School. And Elijah's son Godfrey is a first cousin of Brigadier-General Owen Rhodfrey Mwambapa, a graduate of Sandhurst, a royal military academy in the United Kingdom, who was a senior military instructor and once head of the
Tanzania Military Academy, an army officers' training school at
Monduli in
Arusha Region. One of his students was Paul Kagame who years later became president of Rwanda. Owen's father Johann Chonde Mwambapa was an elder brother of Godfrey's mother, the last-born in her family. He helped raise her after their parents died and even ruled against her getting married at the age of seventeen. He said she was too young to get married. He was 13 years older than she was. She went to live with him after their parents died and helped to take care of her nephew Owen who was born when she was already living there. She had four elder brothers and two sisters. One of her elder brothers, Benjamin Mwambapa who was the younger brother of Owen's father, became head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for Rungwe District soon after independence and worked at the police station in the town of Tukuyu with the district police chief Robert Kaswende, Elijah Mwakikagile's friend since the early 1940s. Earlier, Benjamin Mwambapa worked for E. N. Brend, head of the Special Branch, an intelligence unit, for Lake Province at the police station in the provincial capital Mwanza during colonial rule. He also worked at the same police station in Mwanza with Peter Bwimbo who, after independence, became head of the Presidential Protection Unit and President Nyerere's Chief Bodyguard. They worked in the same department. Bwimbo later served as assistant director of the Tanzania Intelligence and Security Service (TISS). He also wrote about Benjamin Mwambapa in his book,
Mlinzi Mkuu wa Mwalimu Nyerere (Chief Bodyguard of Mwalimu Nyerere), on the years they worked together at the police station in Mwanza since 1953. He stated that when he arrived at Mwanza police station on 1 April 1953 after being transferred from Dar es Salaam, Benjamin had already been working for E.N. Brend for a long time. It was an experience that later facilitated his appointment as head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for Rungwe District soon afer independence. Bwimbo also stated in his book that the police officers called Brend Bwana Mtemba in Swahili which means Mister Pipe because he smoked a pipe but did not know they called him that. Coincidentally, Peter Bwimbo's younger brother Patrick Bwimbo was a classmate of Godfrey Mwakikagile at Tambaza High School in Dar es Salaam; so was George Mazula, one of Tanzania's first commercial airline pilots, and
Mohamed Chande Othman who became Chief Justice of Tanzania.
Education and early employment Godfrey Mwakikagile attended Kyimbila Primary School - founded by British feminist educator Mary Hancock and transformed into a co-educational institution - near the town of
Tukuyu in the late 1950s. Mary Hancock was also the founder of Loleza Girls' School in the town of Mbeya which had its origin in Kyimbila Girls' School. Mwakikagile also attended Mpuguso Middle School in
Rungwe District,
Mbeya Region, in the Southern Highlands Province. The headmaster of Mpuguso Middle School, Moses Mwakibete, was his math teacher in Standard Five in 1961. Mwakibete later became a judge at the
High Court of Tanzania appointed by President Nyerere. And one of his American
Peace Corps teachers at Mpuguso Middle School in Standard Eight in 1964 was
Leonard Levitt who became a prominent journalist and renowned author. He wrote, among other works,
An African Season, the first book ever written by a member of the Peace Corps, and
Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder, about a homicide which received extensive media coverage because it involved a member of the Kennedy family. Mwakikagile also attended
Songea Secondary School from 1965 to 1968 in
Ruvuma Region which was once a part of the Southern Province. His current affairs teacher at Songea Secondary School, Julius Mwasanyagi, was one of the early members and leaders of
TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) who played a major role in the struggle for independence and worked closely with Nyerere. He was one of the major participants at the Tabora Conference of 1958 when the role of TANU was debated on how the party would carry on the independence struggle as a nationalist movement without compromising the interests of the black African majority. He fell out of favour with Nyerere in the mid-1960s and spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity as a secondary school teacher, almost forgotten as one of the earliest and most prominent nationalists who, together with
Nyerere,
Oscar Kambona,
Abdullah Kassim Hanga and
Bibi Titi Mohammed, was one of the first proponents and supporters of the unification of Tanganyika and
Zanzibar, even before the
Zanzibar Revolution, which led to the creation of Tanzania as a union of two independent countries. A native of
Iringa District in the Southern Highlands Province, Mwasanyagi was one of the most vocal nationalists of his time who also, in the 1950s, wrote and sent petitions to the
United Nations opposing the government's land policy which involved land grabs and other colonial injustices during British rule which affected the well-being of the indigenous people. He stated in one of his petitions to the United Nations that one day the people, subjected to land dispossession, will find out that their fertile land was declared
White Highlands for white settlers as happened in neighbouring
Kenya where the
Kikuyu lost their land in the Central Highlands to the British settlers, triggering the
Mau Mau rebellion - war of independence. A graduate of
Makerere University and classmate of
Nyerere at Makerere, Mwasanyagi was also one of the most influential teachers in the history of Songea Secondary School - so was
Erasto Andrew Mbwana Mang'enya who also once taught there - and of the country as a whole in the post-colonial era, whose reputation as a scholar and as a Pan-African nationalist left an indelible mark on his students. He had a deep booming voice and thorough command of both Kiswahili and English and was one of the most articulate and remains one of the most-forgotten early nationalists in Tanganyika's colonial and post-colonial history. He articulated positions which thrust him into prominence as one of the national leaders and not just of the
Hehe people (Wahehe) in Iringa District in the
Southern Highlands Province during the struggle for independence. As a Pan-Africanist, he greatly admired
Kwame Nkrumah and
Julius Nyerere as leaders of continental stature despite his sharp differences with Nyerere on what route Tanzania should take in pursuit and consolidation of democracy. It is a subject one of his students, Godfrey Mwakikagile, has briefly addressed in his book
Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era (2002, 2010). Mwasanyagi has drawn the interest of some scholars in and outside Tanzania because of his important role in the struggle for independence and in the quest for democracy, among them, Professor James L. Giblin of the
University of Iowa, whose primary research focuses on
Tanzania and
East Africa. Godfrey Mwakikagile has also addressed the subject in his book
Julius Mwasanyagi: A forgotten African nationalist (2023). Mwakikagile's headmaster at Songea Secondary School, Paul Mhaiki, also played a national role when he was later appointed by President Nyerere as Director of Adult Education at the Ministry of National Education and after that worked for the
United Nations (UN) as Director of
UNESCO's Division of Literacy, Adult Education, and Rural Development. He later served as Tanzania's ambassador to France. After finishing his studies at Songea Secondary School in Form IV (Standard 12) in 1968, Mwakikagile went to Tambaza High School in 1969 in
Dar es Salaam, formerly H.H. The
Aga Khan High School mostly for Asian students (Indian and Pakistani), where he completed Form VI (Standard 14) in 1970. One of his classmates at Tambaza High School, Mohamed Chande Othman, simply known as Chande, became the seventh Chief Justice of Tanzania since independence appointed to the nation's highest court by President
Jakaya Kikwete after serving as a high court judge and as a UN prosecutor for international criminal tribunals. While still in high school at Tambaza, Mwakikagile joined the editorial staff of
The Standard (later renamed the
Daily News) in 1969 as a reporter. He was hired by the news editor, David Martin, a British journalist who later became
Africa correspondent of a
London newspaper,
The Observer, the world's oldest Sunday paper, covered the
Angolan Civil War for
BBC and for
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and was a close friend of President Nyerere. Mwakikagile credits David Martin for opening the door for him into the world of journalism and helping him launch his career as a news reporter when he was still a high school student. In addition to his position as news editor, David Martin also served as deputy managing editor of the Tanganyika
Standard under Brendon Grimshaw. Founded in 1930,
The Standard was the oldest and largest English newspaper in the country and one of the three largest in
East Africa, a region comprising
Kenya,
Uganda and Tanzania. After finishing high school in November 1970, Mwakikagile joined the
National Service in January 1971 which was mandatory for all those who had completed secondary school, high school and college or university studies. He underwent training, which included basic military training, at
Ruvu National Service camp when it was headed by his former primary school teacher Eslie Mwakyambiki who later became a Member of Parliament (MP) representing
Rungwe District and Deputy Minister of Defence and National Service under President Nyerere. Mwakikagile then went to another National Service camp in
Bukoba on the shores of
Lake Victoria in the North-West Region bordering
Uganda. After leaving National Service, Mwakikagile returned to the
Daily News. His editor then was Sammy Mdee who later served as President Nyerere's press secretary and as Tanzania's deputy ambassador to the
United Nations and as ambassador to
France and
Portugal, and then
Benjamin Mkapa who helped him to further his studies in the
United States. Years later, Mkapa became
President of Tanzania after serving as President Nyerere's press secretary, Minister of Foreign Affairs and as ambassador to
Nigeria,
Canada and the United States among other cabinet and ambassadorial posts. He was a student of Nyerere in secondary school at St. Francis College,
Pugu, on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, and president of Tanzania for 10 years, serving two consecutive five-year terms. Mwakikagile also worked as an
information officer at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in Dar es Salaam. He left Tanzania in November 1972 to go for further studies in the United States when he was a reporter at the
Daily News under Mkapa. He has stated in some of his writings including
Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era that without Mkapa, he may never have gone to school in the United States where he became an author and an
Africanist focusing on post-colonial studies. He also credits Mkapa for helping him achieve his goal as an author because of the role he played in sending him to the United States where he got the opportunity to write books. Mkapa was also a close friend of David Martin. One of Mwakikagile's main books in post-colonial studies is
The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation (Nova Science Publishers, Inc., Huntington, New York, 2001). Professor Guy Martin, in his book
African Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) in which he examines the political thought of leading African political thinkers throughout history dating back to ancient times (Kush/Nubia, sixth century BCE), has described Mwakikagile as one of Africa's leading populist scholars and political thinkers and theorists and has used his book
The Modern African State to examine his ideas. Professor Edmond J. Keller, Chairman of the Political Science Department at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), in his review of Professor Martin's
African Political Thought in
Africa Today, Volume 60, Number 2, Winter 2013, Indiana University Press, has described Mwakikagile as a
public intellectual and an academic theorist. Other major African political thinkers and theorists covered by Professor Guy Martin in his book include Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah,
Leopold Sédar Senghor,
Amilcar Cabral,
Cheikh Anta Diop, and
Steve Biko. Professor Ryan Ronnenberg in his article about Godfrey Mwakikagile in the
Dictionary of African Biography, Volume 6 (Oxford University Press, 2011) covering the lives and legacies of notable African men and women since ancient times, edited by Harvard University professors,
Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and
Henry Louis Gates Jr., has stated that Mwakikagile has written major works of scholarship which have had a great impact in the area of
African studies. Some of Mwakikagile's most influential books in post-colonial studies include
Africa and the West, reviewed by
West Africa magazine and other publications including Sierra Leone's
ExpoTimes, and
Africa After Independence: Realities of Nationhood. Professor Ronnenberg has used both books and others including
Economic Development in Africa and
Africa is in a Mess: What Went Wrong and What Should Be Done by Mwakikagile in his article about him in the
Dictionary of African Biography to explain his ideas and influence. Professor
George Ayittey has described Godfrey Mwakikagile as one of Africa's leading “Cheetahs,” a term he has used in his lectures and writings to describe Africans, especially of the younger generation and sometimes older ones, who offer from a different perspective innovative solutions for fundamental change to transform Africa into a prosperous continent contrasted with what has been proposed and pursued by African leaders since independence, as Mwakikagile has shown in
Africa is in a Mess and in his other books on post-colonial Africa. Anna Mahjar Barducci, like Ayittey, has described Mwakikagile in similar terms in her work, “Aiutiamoli A Casa Loro? Lo Stiamo Già Facendo, Ma Male” (“Let's Help Them at Home? We Are Already Doing It, But Badly”). Mwakikagile has through the years focused on the failure of African leaders and governments to address the continent's problems, abusing their power, misusing and squandering resources which could have been used to improve living conditions of their people and develop the continent which does not even need foreign aid because of its vast amounts of natural resources. In his book
The Fear and The Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us, British historian and best-selling author Keith Lowe wrote the following about Mwakikagile: “In 2006 the Tanzanian intellectual Godfrey Mwakikagile wrote despairingly about how some Africans, disillusioned by years of poverty, violence and corruption, had begun to look back on their colonial past with a kind of warped nostalgia.” Mwakikagile places the blame squarely on the shoulders of African leaders. He also blames them for the massive brain drain Africa has suffered through the years since independence, with tens of thousands of highly educated people and professionals – critical to Africa's development – leaving the continent every year, a phenomenon that has become one of the defining features of Africa in the post-colonial era. He contends that bad leadership is the biggest problem African countries have faced since independence because leaders are not held accountable for their actions and rig elections to stay in power and even perpetuate themselves in office, a problem he has addressed in his books including
Ethnicity and Regionalism in National Politics in Kenya and Nigeria: A Comparative Study (2024). In another one of his books,
The Sixties in Africa and The United States: A Decade of Transformation published in 2026, Mwakikagile has also addressed the challenges African countries faced during the Cold War, an ideological rivalry between the East ad the West which had a direct impact on the emerging nations and partly determined the course they took in their quest for consolidation of their independence including the kind of institutions they attempted to build at the expense of democracy. It is complemented by another one of his works
The Turbulent Decade (2026). He further contends that power in African countries is too centralised, concentrated at the centre, ostensibly to maintain unity and stability while the real intention is to deny people freedom and suffocate dissent. Leaders think they are the only people who know what is best for their countries. Most African countries are de facto one-party states even in this era of multi-party democracy, making it impossible for the people to harness their full potential to participate in the conduct of national affairs and development of their countries. He maintains that denial of democratic rights and suppression of dissent has plunged a number of African countries into chaos through the years, including those once considered to be islands of stability on a turbulent continent. His books are mostly found in college and university libraries throughout the world. They are also found in public libraries. They are mostly academic books primarily for scholars. Mwakikagile's works in post-colonial studies have been cited in other contexts besides academic fields. The premier of
Western Cape Province in
South Africa,
Helen Zille, in her speech in the provincial parliament on 28 March 2017, cited Godfrey Mwakikagile's analysis of the impact of colonial rule on Africa in defence of her Tweets which her critics said were a defence of
colonialism and even called for her resignation. She said her analysis was the same as Mwakikagile's and those of other prominent people including
Nelson Mandela,
Chinua Achebe,
Ali Mazrui, and former Indian prime minister,
Manmohan Singh, stating that she made the same point they did. And South African Vice President
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka in her speech on African leadership and development at a conference of African leaders, diplomats and scholars at the
University of the Western Cape in South Africa in September 2006 cited Mwakikagile from his book
Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era to support her position on the subject. In the United States, Mwakikagile served as president of the African Students Union whilst attending
Wayne State University in
Detroit,
Michigan. He graduated from that university in 1975. He was sponsored by the Pan-African Congress-USA, a Detroit-based African-American organisation founded by Arthur Smith (Kwame Atta), who was a close friend of
Malcolm X, and
Edward Vaughn, a political activist and national civil rights leader who served as executive assistant to Detroit's first black mayor
Coleman Young and as a state representative of Detroit in the
Michigan State Legislature and later as president of the
NAACP for the state of
Alabama, as Mwakikagile has explained in his writings including
Reflections on Race Relations: A Personal Odyssey. Edward Vaughn, simply known as Ed Vaughn, was, together with
C.L.R. James and
Amiri Baraka, one of the leading African American delegates to the Sixth
Pan-African Congress held at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in June 1974 that was chaired by President Nyerere. It was the first of its kind to be held on African soil. The last one, the Fifth Pan-African Congress, was held in Manchester, England, in October 1945 and was attended by future African leaders
Kwame Nkrumah,
Jomo Kenyatta and
Hastings Kamuzu Banda who became the first presidents of their countries on attainment of independence. The Pan-African Congress-USA was formed to establish ties with African countries – some of its members went to live and work in Africa including Tanzania – and supported liberation movements in the countries of southern Africa in their struggle against white minority rule. It was inspired by and followed the teachings and writings of
Kwame Nkrumah,
Julius Nyerere,
Ahmed Sékou Touré,
Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X. These were also the only leaders whose portraits were on the wall of the conference hall of the Pan-African Congress-USA. Pan-African Congress leaders and other members also wore Nyerere suit worn by President Nyerere and other Tanzanian leaders, as did
Amiri Baraka, formerly
LeRoi Jones, who also greatly admired Nyerere and was a Pan-Africanist close ally of Ed Vaughn. Nyerere was greatly admired and highly respected not just for his statesmanship and Pan-Africanist credentials but for other qualities as well. As Dr. Matt Meyer, an academic and the Africa Support Network Coordinator for the War Resisters, stated in “Revolutionary Nonviolence: Statecraft Lessons from the Global South,"
Tikkun, Volume 30, Issue 3, Duke University Press, Summer 2015: “Tanzanian intellectual Godfrey Mwakikagile, author of numerous works on contemporary statecraft, noted that Nyerere led with 'extraordinary intelligence.'” President Jimmy Carter described Nyerere as "a world leader" not just an African leader, and as "a scholar" and "a philosopher." His scholarly accomplishments included translating Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar and
The Merchant of Venice into Swahili. He also translated Plato's magnum opus,
The Republic, into Swahili, considered to be his last major literary work before he died in 1999. Professor
Issa Shivji said Nyerere revealed to them at a conference in Dar es Salaam commemorating his 75th birthday that he had finished translating Plato's work into Swahili. He strongly promoted the use of Kiswahili (Swahili) as a unifying language in Tanzania and, by extension, in East Africa, more than any other leader did. Professor
Ali Mazrui stated that Nyerere was "the most intellectual African leader" and "the most original thinker" among all African leaders and "the most enterprising of African political philosophers. He has philosophized extensively in both English and Kiswahili." He also stated, "The most intellectual of East Africa's Heads of State at the time was Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania, a true philosopher, president and original thinker....Julius K. Nyerere was in a class by himself in the combination of ethical standards and intellectual power. In the combination of high thinking and high ethics, no other East African politician was in the same league." Mazrui also stated in
The Gambia Echo, 25 July 2008: "Intellectually, I had higher regard for Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania than most politicians anywhere in the world." His global stature as a towering figure was expressed by Mazrui in these terms in "Nyerere and I" in the
Daily Nation, Nairobi, Kenya, 26 December 1999: "He was one of the giants of the 20th century. He did bestride this narrow world like an African colossus. Julius Nyerere was my Mwalimu (Teacher) too. It was a privilege to learn so much from so great a man." His professors and fellow students at the University of Edinburgh remembered him well. His humility and simplicity belied his intellect. As Trevor Grundy stated in " Julius Nyerere Reconsidered," 4 May 2015: "He had a formidable intellect and a blotting paper brain. Statesmen and journalists were amazed at his knowledge. Hardly a soul at Edinburgh guessed he would turn into Africa's number one brain box in years to come. As the historian George Shepperson put it in a BBC interview: 'We at Edinburgh were very surprised in the mid-1950s when Dr Nyerere's name became widespread throughout the world press. We never felt when he was here that he was going to become a leading politician.' The Rhodesian leader Ian Smith several times referred to Nyerere as Africa's 'evil genius.'" The United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saw Nyerere and Léopold Sédar Senghor as the two most intellectual African presidents – so did Ali Mazrui – with profound visions for Africa, as he stated in his book
Henry Kissinger: Years of Renewal: "The two most impressive leaders I encountered on this trip, Nyerere and Senghor, were at opposite ends of the African spectrum. In a sense, they represented metaphors for varying approaches to African identity. Nyerere considered himself as a leader of an Africa that should evolve in a unique way, separate from the currents in the rest of the world which Africa would use without permitting them to contaminate its essence. Senghor saw himself as a participant in an international order in which Africa and
négritude would play a significant, but not isolated, role. When all is said and done, Nyerere strove for the victory of black Africa while Senghor sought a reconciliation of cultures within the context of self-determination." Jonathan Power, an internationally renowned British journalist and columnist for decades who lived and worked in Tanzania for a number of years and who was critical of Nyerere's socialist policies and one-party system, stated in his article "Lament for Independent Africa's Greatest Leader", TFF Jonathan Power Columns, London, 6 October 1999: "Tanzania in East Africa has long been one of the 25 poorest countries in the world. But there was a time when it was described, in terms of its political influence, as one of the top 25. It punched far above its weight. That formidable achievement was the work of one man (Julius Nyerere), now lying close to death in a London hospital. Measured against most of his peers, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, he towered above them. On the intellectual plane only the rather remote president of Senegal, the great poet and author of Negritude, Leopold Senghor, came close to him." The American ambassador to Tanzania, Richard N. Viets, said this about Nyerere in an interview with The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, in April 1990: “He was a superb politician. He had an acute brain, the memory of an elephant, intellectual horsepower that was second to none.” Robert Hennemeyer who was the deputy American ambassador to Tanganyika, later Tanzania, from 1961 to 1964, described Nyerere in the following terms in an interview with ADST in February 1989: “He was a great political theorist, a charismatic figure, a great leader of his people. I don't believe for a moment that he meant anything but to do the best he could for the well-being of his people. He had an enormous amount of influence with other black African leaders. He was so revered as the great father. Clearly he was a world leader, not just an African leader.” Nyerere's stature and influence in a global context is one of the subjects Mwakikagile has addressed in his books, among them,
Tanzania under Mwalimu Nyerere: Reflections on an African Statesman and
The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar: Formation of Tanzania and its Challenges. He was also incorruptible. As Roger Mann stated in his report in
The Washington Post, 4 August 1977: "He is also a man of irrepressible intellect....Nyerere is personally considered to be above reproach. A wealthy Nairobi-based Greek businesswoman, whose family has been involved in Tanzania for two generations, says 'Nyerere is the only man in East Africa who cannot be bought.' A practicing Roman Catholic of simple tastes, the 55-year-old philosopher president is said to be the lowest paid head of state in Africa." And When he died,
Newsweek, although critical of his policies of socialism and one-party rule, stated in "A Man of Principle," October 24, 1999: "The world lost a man of principle." His principled stand was a great inspiration to the Pan-African Congress-USA which sponsored Mwakikagile. The main leader of the Pan-African Congress-USA,
Edward Vaughn, also known as Mwalimu like President Nyerere, met with Nyerere when he was one of the leading African American delegates to the Sixth-Pan-African Congress held in Dar es Saalam in June 1974. Vaughn's work and influence as a civil rights leader and as a Pan-Africanist is the subject of Mwakikagile's book
Ed Vaughn: Remembering an icon (2024). Pan-African Congress members also learned and taught Swahili. The organisation also had a scholarship programme to sponsor students from Africa to study in Detroit. The director of the scholarship programme, Malikia Wada Lumumba (Rosemary Jones), was a professor of psychology. Besides Tanzania, other students came from
Ghana,
Sierra Leone,
Nigeria and
Gambia. Godfrey Mwakikagile was the first student from Tanzania to be sponsored by the organisation. His colleague at the
Daily News in Tanzania, Deo Michael Masakilija, where both worked as reporters, was also sponsored by the Pan-African Congress-USA. Mwakikagile was also one of two students among those sponsored who became authors. The other one was Amadou S.O. Taal from Gambia who became an economist under President
Dawda Jawara and later served concurrently as Gambia's ambassador to Nigeria, Ghana,
Angola,
Chad,
Rwanda and seven other African countries and to the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). He and Mwakikagile planned to write a book together on NEPAD –
New Partnership for Africa's Development – as Mwakikagile stated in his writings including
Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era and
Africa is in a Mess: What Went Wrong and What Should Be Done. They were schoolmates and roommates when they attended Wayne State University from the early to the mid-seventies. After completing his studies at Wayne State University, Mwakikagile went to
Aquinas College in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1976. One of his professors of economics and head of the economics department at Aquinas College was
Kenneth Marin who once worked as an economic advisor to the government of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam on capital mobilisation and utilisation from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. He went to the same Catholic church President Nyerere did in Oyster Bay, Dar es Salaam. Before he went to Tanzania, Professor Marin was a member of the
White House Consumer Advisory Council where he served on Wage and Price Control in the mid-1960s, appointed by President
Lyndon B. Johnson. He read Nyerere's writings to his students in economics classes at Aquinas College and said about Nyerere: "He is one of the best world leaders we have today," as Mwakikagile has stated in some of his books including
Reflections on Race Relations: A Personal Odyssey. Coincidentally, Mwakikagile's first book was also about economics. Mwakikagile also taught Swahili at Grand Rapids South High School in the late seventies. The school's most famous student years earlier was Gerald R. Ford, a native of Grand Rapids, who later became vice president and then president of the United States. Mwakikagile also composed some instrumental music in 1993 - self-taught - but did not release it until thirty years later, as he has briefly explained in one of his books,
Julius Mwasanyagi: A forgotten African nationalist, in which he also states that he pursued it only as a hobby during that time and has, instead, focused on writing books through the years. ==Books==