African Women and Intellectual Leadership (Routledge Contemporary Africa)

This book highlights the pioneering roles of African women as leaders and role models in Kenya, providing examples taken from across education, health, business, and a range of other sectors. Drawing on authentic first-hand accounts and narratives from key women in leadership positions, and those who have lived with them, the book presents the life stories of women leaders over the last fifty years, aiming to preserve their contributions for posterity and to inspire young people with moral, ethical, and progressive role models. The book uses African knowledge production strategies that look at the human being holistically, in the prism of Ubuntu, in order to define leadership in Africa from an African perspective, one that celebrates the role of the mother figure and places women at the centre of African values and societal dynamics. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of African studies, gender studies, and Kenyan education and socio-political history.

Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi is Professor and Director of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at the Technical University of Kenya (TUK), Nairobi, Kenya. He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, as major in history and minor in political science and comparative gender. He is the author of more than 70 books and manuscripts, among them The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Development in Kenya (New York: Routledge, 2006) and Regime Change and Succession Politics in Africa: Five Decades of Misrule (by Maurice N. Amutabi and Shadrack Wanjala Nasongo, New York: Routledge, 2015), and more than 100 articles in refereed journals and edited books. Professor Amutabi has previously served as DVC (Academics, Research, and Student Affairs) at Kisii University and Vice Chancellor at Lukenya University, Kenya.

Emily Achieng' Akuno is Vice Chancellor of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology. A professor of music, she trained as a performer-educator at Kenyatta University in Kenya, Northwestern State University of Louisiana in the United States, and Kingston University in the United Kingdom. Her research interests veer towards cultural relevance in music education. She is the editor and contributing author of the 2019 publication Music Education in Africa: Concept, Process and Practice as well as articles tackling issues around music and teacher education in cultural contexts. She is a former president of the International Music Council (IMC) and the International Society for Music Education (ISME), as well as the founding chair of the Music Education Research Group – Kenya (MERG-Kenya).

Humphrey Jeremiah Ojwang holds a PhD Degree in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Nairobi, Kenya specializing in African Feminist Epistemology. He is currently Senior Research Associate in Linguistics and Paleoethnobotany at the Department of Earth Sciences, National Museums of Kenya; Founder Chair of Ethnoconservation Committee of Nature Kenya (East Africa Natural History Society); Member of Nature Tanzania; Founder of Education for Social Responsibility-Africa; Member of the Kenya Museum Society, Nairobi, Kenya; and Honorary Professor in Ethnobotany at the Traditional Medicine Institute, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He holds a Bachelor of Education (BEd) Honours Degree in Linguistics and English Language from the University of Nairobi; a Master of Science (MSc) Degree in Applied Linguistics and the Teaching of English for Specific Purposes from the University Aston in Birmingham, England. He is a Former Senior Research Fellow and Thematic Unit Head of Language, Culture, and Society (Linguistic Anthropology) at the Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi, Kenya and continues to be involved in research and postgraduate supervision at the same University on African Women’s Studies Programme. He is also engaged with Creative and Performing Artists in Mental Health Awareness Programmes within the East African Community. His teaching and research interest is in gender and women’s studies.

Dannica Fleuss is Research Fellow at the Institute of Future Media, Democracy and Society at Dublin City University (Ireland) and Research Associate at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (University of Canberra, Australia). She has been a research fellow and senior lecturer in political theory, empirical political science, and political philosophy at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, and Heidelberg University. She is a co-convenor of the PSA’s Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Specialist Group, a co-convenor of the German DVPW’s Teaching and Learning Specialist Group, and an associate editor of the interdisciplinary journal Democratic Theory. She was a visiting research fellow and lecturer at the University of Canberra (Australia), Westminster University (London, UK), the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), the University of Nairobi, and the Technical University of Kenya (Kenya). Dannica holds an MA in philosophy and political science and a PhD in political science. Her published research, for example, in Political Studies, Policy & Internet, Political Studies or Political Geography, and in her monograph Radical Proceduralism, focuses on theories of democratic legitimacy, deliberative democracy, environmental politics and attempts at decolonizing democratic theory.