Ajume Wingo

Ajume Wingo presents his paper, "An Image of Political Freedom in Africa," at the ICSAA.

Ajume H. Wingo

Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Boston Senior Fellow at the McCormack Institute’s Center for Democracy and Development, the University of Massachusetts Boston Fellow at Du Bois Institute, Harvard University.

A citizen of Cameroon who was born in Nso in the North West Province of Cameroon, Mr. Wingo attended Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology (CCAST) Bambili where he studied History, Economics and Geography. He also attended the University Yaounde, Cameroon where he studied law at the Faculty of Law and Economics. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California Berkeley and a Master of Arts (1995) and Doctorate of Philosophy (1997) from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He was a fellow at the Institute of Race and Social Division, Boston University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Clark University and Emerson College. Mr. Wingo has published widely on liberal democratic philosophy and politics and on African Art and Aesthetics. In collaboration with Dr. Michael Kruse, he is currently working on a book entitled The Citizen, which relates the struggle of Africans moving beyond where their history has placed them to begin to make their own future. Ajume H. Wingo is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow at the McCormack Institute’s Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, as well as a Fellow at the Du Bois Institute, Harvard University.

He examines the idea of freedom as it is thought to be by Africans, recognizing that, for over half a millennium, the lives of Africans have been control by external forces, “be they natural or human made; to wit: slave masters, colonial masters, home grown tyrants, diseases, famine and vermin.” He aims to paint a picture of what political power and freedom for Africans is and could be.