Who Owns the Problem?

“Long after you have read them, the insights of these essays stay with you, almost in the same manner in which the memory of his life and work, now that he
is gone, remain indelible. No other person writes of Africa in the world and the world in Africa like Pius Adesanmi. Consistently passionate, witty, humorous,
and yet rigorously researched and thought through, the essays collected in this book are sure to create a new benchmark for activist intellectualism in public
discourse in the social media.”
—BIODUN JEYIFO, former Professor in African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature, Harvard University

Before his untimely death, Pius Adesanmi had emerged as one of Africa’s leading public intellectuals and as an astute interpreter of the African imagination. In this collection he speaks to us from the land of the ancestors with a voice that is both cautionary and prophetic, providing one of the best diagnoses of the African problematic that I have read in many years. Combining sharp analysis with humor, this book is an invitation to all of us to rededicate our commitment to Africa’s continuing struggle for agency in the twenty-first century.

~Simon Gikandi, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University

Long after you have read them, the insights of these essays stay with you, almost in the same manner in which the memory of his life and work, now that he is gone, remain indelible. No other person writes of Africa in the world and the world in Africa like Pius Adesanmi. Consistently passionate, witty, humorous, and yet rigorously researched and thought through, the essays collected in this book are sure to create a new benchmark for activist intellectualism in public discourse in the social media.

~Biodun Jeyifo, former Professor in African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, and author of Against the Predators’ Republic: Political and Cultural Journalism, 2007–2013