Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

Pan-African activist, campaigning journalist and editor

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (1961-2009) was a Nigerian Pan-Africa activist and campaigning journalist. After studying at Bayero University in Kano, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he gained his DPhil in political science. He then embarked on a career of activism, largely promoting the pan-African movement. He was a founder member of the Africa Resource and Information Bureau, London, and was at the centre of numerous initiatives to promote peace and democracy in Africa. In 1994, he became Secretary-General of the seventh Pan-African Congress held in Kampala in 1994. He wrote a book on this subject: Pan-Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty-first Century (1996).

Abdul-Raheem also wrote about Africa for several journals and universities, and his long-standing ‘Thursday postcard’ was read throughout Africa, it carried the dictum: ‘forward ever, backward never.’ As Chairperson of the Centre for Democratic Development, the Pan African Development Education and Advocacy Programme and as founder of Justice Africa, he combined his time between London and Uganda. He died tragically after a car accident in Nairobi on 25 May 2009.