Professor Sylvia Tamale delivered this lecture fascinatingly titled “Towards Feminist Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Feminism.” The lecture adroitly lays bare one of the appalling silences in the history of Pan-Africanist and nationalist ideas. Indeed, Pan-Africanism has been his story. Sylvia does not simply and mechanically transpose it to her story. She goes much further. Through painstaking research and perceptive analysis, she demonstrates the central role played by women in the very origin and development of Pan-Africanist thought. This is a remarkable contribution and NRC is proud to present it for wider circulation, reflection and debate.

Friends of NRC would also be sad to know that Sylvia Tamale’s lecture was the last in the Nyerere Dialogue Lecture Series. In February 2019, the Board of Commissioners of COSTECH, in their wisdom, decided that NRC was no longer relevant to its activities and directed that NRC wind up its activities by 31st December 2019. NRC as an institution will thus cease to exist by the end of the year. But the ideas that gave it birth and the ideas it generated during its existence will continue to live, both in its publications and in the imagination and memories of the people who participated in NRC. It is unfortunate that in our political praxis institutions have a finite life span. Fortunately, though, our people archive and treasure ideas and memories which they creatively excavate in times of crisis. Mwalimu’s ideas and memories are of such a kind. They are a beacon of hope that may be dimmed but never extinguished.