Tribute to Claude Ake
The Editorial Board would like to express its deep regret at the
death this year in a plane crash of Prof Claude Ake of the
University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Claude Ake is perhaps
best-known in South Africa as the author of The Political Economy
of Africa. Likeable and energetic, he was one of the first African
social scientists to try creatively and critically to come to grips
with the main social and political characteristics of African
society. Invited to present a paper on ethnicity in Africa at a
conference in Pietermaritzburg several years ago, we were pleased
to publish it in edited form in Transformation. His premature death
is a sad event for Nigeria and for Africa.