Firoze Manji

Firoze Madatally Manji (born 1950) is a Kenyan activist with more than 40 years’ experience in international development, health, human rights, teaching, publishing and political organizing.

He is the recipient of the 2021 Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Firoze Manji was born in Kenya, to Kenya's "Biscuit Baron" Madatally Manji and his wife Fatima.

After obtaining a dentistry degree from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, he started his career as a dentist working as a prison dentist and part-time as an immigration advisor at the Hammersmith Law Centre, London.

He obtained MSc in Dental Public Health from the London Hospital Medical College, University of London; and a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of London.

Firoze Manji is the publisher of Daraja Press and presenter of the podcast series Organising in the time of COVID-19.

He is also the founder and former editor-in-chief of the pan-African social justice newsletter and website Pambazuka News and Pambazuka Press.

He is the founder and former executive director of Fahamu - Networks for Social Justice.

He has published widely on health, social policy, human rights and political sciences, and authored and edited a range of books on social justice in Africa, including on women's rights, trade justice, on China's role in Africa, and on the uprisings in Africa.

He is co-editor, with Sokari Ekine, of African Awakenings: The Emerging Revolutions and co-editor with Bill Fletcher Jr, of Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral.

He was managing director of TWIN / TWIN Trading 1997-1997.

He was Visiting Fellow, Kellogg College, University of Oxford 2001–2016.

He has authored chapters in several books, including Culture, Power and Resistance: reflections on the ideas of Amilcar Cabral in the State of Power 2017 published by the Transnational Institute; and: “[https://www.academia.edu/43913846/EMANCIPATION_FREEDOM_OR_TAXONOMY_WHAT_DOES_IT_MEAN_TO_BE_AFRICAN Emancipation, freedom or taxonomy?

He served as a member of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the Role of TNCs in Southern Africa (2018-9).

Firoze Manji is Adjunct Professor in the Institute for African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, Senior Researcher at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies and Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin.

Manji is a former board member of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and a former member of the board of Greenpeace Africa.

He is a member of the editorial review board of Global Critical Caribbean Thought. He is a member of the editorial board of Nokoko, Journal of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, and a member of the international advisory board of the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs.

He is member of the editorial board of AwaaZ Magazine.

What does it mean to be African?]” in Racism After Apartheid (Wits University Press), 2019.

Manji has previously worked as director of Pan-African Baraza for Thoughtworks, as Africa program director for Amnesty International, Chief Executive of the Aga Khan Foundation (UK), and Regional Representative for Health Sciences in Eastern and Southern Africa for the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), researcher at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, and lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine in Dental Public Health, University of Nairobi.