Thandika mkandawire biography of abraham lincoln

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Thandika is a pan-African scholar par excellence.”

Mkandawire was a Swedish national of Malawian origin and an economist who had a profound effect on researching key development issues. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 40(2), 181-215.

Mkandawire, P. T, and C.C. Soludo, eds. In some cases, African economies outpaced their counterparts in other regions and had done so with smaller bureaucracies and public administrations.

Some of his formidable and influential book-length publications include African Voices on Structural Adjustment (Africa World Press, 1991); Our Continent, Our Futures: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment (1991, Codesria); Between Liberalisation and Oppression: Politics and Structural Adjustment in Africa (1996, Codesria); Social Policy in Development Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development (Zed Books, 2005).

He was expected in Dakar, in September 2019 to speak at TrustAfrica’s Conference on: Challenging Orthodoxies in Economic Thinking in Africa.

Mkandawire also argued that the very policies being proposed, and often imposed, by the Bretton Woods institutions, were themselves to blame for the inability of African states in the 1990s to set themselves up on a developmental footing. He was an intellectual giant who understood the importance of building a truly pan African intellectual community and devoted all his life to building that community.

There is a poetic force and visionary importance in all of his writing, indicative of a lifetime of thinking and ideas committed to changing the conditions of peoples’ lives.

Beyond formidable work in policy papers and a plethora of articles in academic journals, some of his formidable and influential book-length publications include African Voices on Structural Adjustment (Africa World Press, 1991); Our Continent, Our Futures: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment (1991, Codesria); Between Liberalisation and Oppression: Politics and Structural Adjustment in Africa (1996, Codesria); Social Policy in Development Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development (Zed Books, 2005).

He was awarded several accolades for his global contributions.

This left him persona non grata until he gained political asylum and eventually citizenship in Sweden. Zed Books.

Mkandawire, T. (2007). In that respect, he is actually not gone: he lives, and will continue to live in many of us, and in everything that can make Africa more dignified and the world fairer, more just, and better.

My deepest condolences to Kaarina, Joshua, Andre and all the Mkandawires; to the CODESRIA, UNRISD, and LSE communities; to Africa, and to you all.

A Dieu Mwalimu.

The Journal of Development Studies, 46(10), 1647-1669.

Mkandawire, T. (2011). "Running while others walk: Knowledge and the challenge of Africa’s development". York University in Canada awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Law in 2018 in which the citation read: “Your international leadership, extensive experience in policy and advocacy, published works, and demonstrated excellence as an academic, in addition to your commitment to social justice, is commendable and serves as a model worthy of emulation by our graduands.”

In a recent interview “Reflections of an Engaged Economist: An Interview with Thandika Mkandawire” in Development and Change (2019) (https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12481) he makes some of the following closing comments: “I’ve seen a lot of remarkable things.

Thandika Mkandawire died in Stokholm on 27 March 2020.

Chopping Bretton Woods down to size

In the 1980s and 1990s, the key drivers of development thinking were neoliberalism and the politics of the Bretton Woods Institutions such as the World Bank and IMF. They championed structural adjustment programmes that broadly cut government spending and focused the remaining welfare spending on primary education and poverty reduction, and promoted the liberalisation of the economy.

I’ve seen South Africa liberated. His contribution to policy debates are equally important, as more tributes will show (including a longer one that I am writing).

As fate would have it, he left us at a time when we couldn’t even bid him farewell because of the lockdowns. Africa Development, 36(2), 1-36.

Mkandawire, Thandika. I have taken it upon myself that, as long as I live, I will review what has been written about Africa and respond."

According to Mkandawire, African economies and their governments were at the mercy of global factors.

But that probably was the whole point: we are not supposed to bid farewell to what he represents or stood for. But Africa must be given space, or capture space, to think its own way out of its predicament.”

As we, in coming weeks and months, embrace the challenges of our world, let us through our various Faculties and platforms (such as Future Africa and Javett-UP) rethink the intellectual legacy and the lessons we are still able to learn from Professor Mkandawire’s life and work as part of our work in living THE UP WAY.

Professor Tawana Kupe

Vice-Chancellor and Principal

University of Pretoria