CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 3, June 2026
by
Dr Cyril Obi, Programme Director, Social Science Research Council, New York (former NAI senior programme researcher)
Carin Norberg, Director: Nordic Africa Institute (2006–2012), Stockholm
Lennart Wohlgemuth, Director: Nordic Africa Institute (1993–2005
Professor Fantu Cheru was an internationally respected African intellectual and policy-thinker, teacher and mentor. He dedicated his career to producing an intellectual agenda and a transformative policy framework for resolving Africa’s complex development challenges. In his quest for change, he observed that this project was multidimensional and that conventional economic development orthodoxies were inadequate, which made him strongly committed to Africa’s renewal and influenced the core of his lifelong work.
As research director at the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) (2007 to 2012), Professor Fantu Cheru helped to reorganise research, knowledge production and publications at NAI, and produced a blueprint for the Swedish government to help tackle Africa’s developmental challenges in the 21st century. He also played an important role as a bridge between Africa and the Nordic countries, and projected the institute as a friend and partner-in-progress.
A scholar of prominent global standing, he went on to take other senior research posts, at the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL) in the Netherlands and the Stockholm Institute for Peace and International Affairs (SIPRI), and was a professor-of-practice supporting doctoral training at the University of Bahir Dar in Ethiopia.
