Anticipating the auspicious convergence of his 60th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his professorial debut, Ali A. Mazrui's students, friends, and colleagues seized the opportunity to critically assess the significance of the prodigious body of scholarship affectionately dubbed "Mazruiana". In November 1992, in Seattle, Washington, four panels devoted exclusively to Mazruiana were convened at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association, with the added attraction of Mazrui's attendance at the convocation and his immediate personal response to the original papers presented there. While no single volume could do justice to Mazrui's colossal literary output, here at least is gathered the collective investigative insight of a team of well-informed critics into select, salient facets of this provocative but stimulating literary and intellectual phenomenon. The long list of contributors to this Festschrift includes: John W. Harbeson, Dunstan M. Wai, Darryl C. Thomas, Negussay Ayele, Parviz Morewedge, Hussein M. Adam, Alamin M. Mazrui, Claude E. Welch, Peter N. Thuynsma, Richard L. Sklar, Betty J. Craige, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Chaly Sawere, Bujor Avari, Diana Frank, Omari H. Kokole, and Ali A. Mazrui himself.

This rich collection brings together many of the leading authorities on African political philosophy to present a variety of perspectives on this rapidly growing field. They seek to show that African philosophy can serve African people as a moral activity guided by the principles of practical reason in addressing problems of the basic structures of social, political, and economic institutions.