The Dakar based Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is in sackcloth over Prof Fantu Cheru, the multiply involved Ethiopian political economist who passed on June 2nd, 2026. CODESRIA said in a statement by Godwin R. Murunga, its Executive Secretary, that Professor Fantu Cheru, was a valued member of the CODESRIA community.
“Fantu (as he was popularly known in our circles) maintained a longstanding engagement with CODESRIA, both as a scholar and as an elder to whom we looked to for advice on a range of matters. The Council rates Prof Cheru’s contribution to its scholarly activities, knowledge production initiatives and resource mobilization efforts to have left an enduring mark on CODESRIA’s history.
It mentions how, most recently, the deceased delivered the inaugural Thandika Mkandawire Memorial Lecture, later published in Africa Development, one of CODESRIA’s publications and which reflected his commitment to advancing critical African scholarship and the revival of transformative approaches to development. The CODESRIA community is privileged to have benefitted from his intellectual contributions, dedication to Africa’s development, and mentorship, said the statement which extended heartfelt condolences to Prof Cheru’s family, colleagues, friends and all those who had the privilege of knowing him on behalf of the CODESRIA Executive Committee, Scientific Committee, Secretariat, and the wider African Social Science and Humanities community
Professor Fantu Cheru was a scholar who enjoyed several institutional affiliations, each of which has excellent profile page on him. From the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), for instance, is his depiction as being one of its Associate Senior Fellow with the Mali Civil Society and Peacebuilding Project; a Distinguished Research Associate at the North–South Institute in Ottawa, Canada; a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for African Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Emeritus Professor of African and Development Studies at American University in Washington, DC where he lectured for over two decades. From 2007-12, he was the Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.
The undated profile page added he was currently serving as a senior external advisor to Ethiopia’s Minister of Urban Development, Housing and Construction. He also serves on the editorial board of a number of academic journals and named some of the numerous international journals where his researches had appeared as World Development, the Review of African Political Economy, International Affairs and Third World Quarterly: Global Political Economy.
He was, additionally, a member of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Panel on Mobilizing International Support for the New Partnership for African Development (2005-2007) as well as Convener of the Global Economic Agenda Track of the Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy, a joint initiatives of the Governments of Finland and Tanzania. Dr. Cheru also served as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Foreign Debt and Structural Adjustment for the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva from 1998-2001. In addition, Dr. Cheru has served both as an advisor and consultant to a number of governments and donor institutions including the UN Economic Commission for Africa, UNDP, UN-Habitat, SIDA, DANIDA, NORAD, among others.
SIPRI named his subject expertise to include Global political economy; political economy of Africa; international development and development management; comparative and regional politics; globalization, trade and regional integration; agriculture and rural development; African urbanization and the urban-rural interface; conflict, democracy and transformation.
Prof Cheru, according to the page, obtained a PhD in Political Economy and Urban Planning from the Portland State University in the United States in 1983, preceded by a MS in Political Science from the same university in 1978 and a BA in Political Science from Colorado College in 1975. That made him a made-in-America political scientist.
Among Prof Cheru’s publications are:
- Cheru, F. and Modi, R. (eds), Agricultural Development and Food Security in Africa: The Impact of Chinese, Indian and Brazilian Investments(Zed Books: London, 2013)
- Cornelissen, S., Cheru, F. and Shaw, T. M. (eds), Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2011)
- Cheru, F. and Obi, C. (eds), The Rise of China and India in Africa: Challenges, Opportunities and Critical Interventions(Nordic Africa Institute/Zed Books: Uppsala/London, 2010)
- Cheru, F., African Renaissance: Roadmaps to the Challenge of Globalization(Zed Books: London, 2002).
For SIPRI, it wrote the October 2014 essay “Africa, emerging economies and the changing development landscape”. His book, African Renaissance: Roadmaps to the Challenge of Globalizationmakes him to be about the only senior African academic to have taken scholarly note of the narrative dimension of the struggle for hegemony over Africa in the post-Cold War.
