The one thing that one would never forget after a meeting with Prof Bethwell Allan Ogot was his direct look into the eyes during a conversation. His stare was more or less the kind of inquisitive, forensic, searching examination. Is there a better tool than that stare for a historian?
For all good historians, the symbolism of material things is as important as the accompanying (hi)story. Or perhaps having been a reputable mathematician — the subject he taught at Alliance High School where he was recruited by Carey Francis in 1954 — any sign was worth his attention.
Prof Ogot — who died on Thursday, January 30 — was one of Africa’s leading historians and intellectuals. He was, in the truest sense of the phrase, an academic giant. The son of Gem in Siaya County, the land of Odera Akang’o, the renowned colonial time Chief and promoter of education, Prof Ogot will be most remembered for his contribution to the study of history in Kenya and Africa with an enviable archive to show for it.
As recently as last year, Prof Ogot was still eloquently writing. In December 2024, he published two books that added to his immense work on the Luo of East Africa: Dholuo-English Dictionary (Anyange Press) and Odera Akang’o (Anyange Press).
Prof Ogot and his son Prof Madara Ogot had also established a book series on the history of Kenyan cities. The first book in this series was on Kisumu, followed by one on Nairobi, with the latest, published in 2023, being on Mombasa. In my conversation with Prof Ogot a few weeks ago, in December, he promised that an expanded version of the Kisumu book would be launched in 2025.
But Prof Ogot was not just one of Kenya’s most prolific writers, he was also a very committed one. He studied and wrote about his subjects with the passion of a builder. For instance, when he left Kenya for Scotland for further studies, he left as a teacher of Mathematics.
But when he chose to pursue a higher degree, Prof Ogot would research and write about the history of his people, the Luo. This commitment to the history of his people would remain a lifelong one even as he continued writing on diverse subjects.
His love for Mathematics would be overtaken by his passion for the precolonial history of his people - who they were, where they came from and what distinguishes them from other peoples in Kenya, East Africa and the continent. Prof Ogot was still speaking as eloquently about this subject in December last year during the Piny Luo Cultural Festival in Siaya County.
Prof Ogot’s liking for history was really his most known public persona. But he was truly an intercultural intellectual. He spoke and wrote passionately about Kenya’s and Africa’s historical trajectory and development. He would seek to persuade any listener that Africa has always had all the resources needed for progress.
For Prof Ogot, development was not possible when driven from outside, beyond the country or continent. People could thrive and contribute to the greater family of humanity from local resources — both material and intellectual. This conviction partly explains why Prof Ogot and some of his colleagues left Makerere University College and relocated to Nairobi to establish what is today the University of Nairobi.
At the University of Nairobi, Prof Ogot and his peers would set research and academic standards that made the humanities and social sciences key to the national development agenda. They brought the histories, cultures, religions, philosophies of the different ethnic communities into the university, subjects that the colonial syllabus had consigned to the periphery of academic studies.
It is not surprising that Prof Ogot was among founders of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nairobi. This institute would lay the foundations for the establishment of development studies as it is known today. These institutions nurtured a firm tradition of ground-breaking research and publications in the humanities and social sciences at the University of Nairobi, a tradition that Prof Ogot would carry with him to Kenyatta University, Maseno University and Moi University, among other institutions where he worked in Kenya.
But even after retiring as a Professor of History and becoming an Emeritus Professor at Maseno University, his research output remained incomparable. Through his publishing company, Anyange Press, Prof Ogot released book after book, each one of them a classic example of how the archive, of whatever form, is really a collection of the everyday experiences of people.
Prof Ogot read and freely referenced oral and written literature - his research influenced his wife Grace Ogot’s literary writing. He was an avid reader of newspapers and books on diverse subjects. He would use these sources to neatly script the history of Kenya, a country that he devotedly served from his youthful days until his death, despite the many opportunities abroad that he would have taken.
It would be too much of a banality to say that Prof Ogot has left too big a gap to fill; rather, he has left us with a very big archive and a huge challenge to add to it.
The reviewer teaches literature, performing arts and media at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]
