Professor of History and Politics and researcher in the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of Witswatervand in Johannesburg. He was born in Cameroon in 1957.

He has worked as a History professor at Columbia University (New York) and the University of Pennsylvania, and has also led the  Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), with headquarters in Dakar.

On another hand, he is a well-known author, both because of his articles in the Spanish versions of Le Monde Diplomatique and also because of his contributions to books coordinated by Gilles Kepel, The Politics of God (The Proliferation of the Divine in Sub-Saharan Africa); Jérôme Bindé, The Future of Values: 21st Century Talks (Racism as a Practice of the Imagination); Fernando López Castellano, Development: Chronicle of a Permanent Challenge (Power, Violence and Accumulation), and Okwui Enwezor, The Unhomely:  Phantom Scenes in Global Society (Necropolitics).

He has also published the influential book De la postcolonie, essai sur l'imagination politique dans l'Afrique contemporaine (On the Postcolony, 2000).

Sources:

• Biography in the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research

Additional information:

• Article by Achille Mbembe

• Article about Achille Mbembe