Prof. Dr. Sanya Osha

Sanya Osha is an author of several works of scholarship and was until recently a fellow the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study (STIAS), South Africa. He is currently a Co2libri fellow at ZMO Berlin and fellow of the African Studies Centre in Leiden. Since 2002, he has been on the Editorial Board of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie. His books include, Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond: The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa (2005), Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Shadow: Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement (2007), Postethnophilosophy (2011 honorable mention, New York Africa Studies Association (NYASA 2013) and African Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities and the Democratic Consensus (2014). Other major publications include, Truth in Politics (2004), co-edited with J. P Salazar and W. van Binsbergen, and African Feminisms (2006) as editor. His most recent books are Dani Nabudere’s Afrikology: A Quest for African Holism (2018), Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Shadow: Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement (Expanded Version, 2021) and An Ethos of Transdisciplinarity (2025).

As an academic, he has held the following research positions: overseas research fellow, National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF); fellow, Centre for Rhetoric Studies, University of Cape Town, 2002; visiting scholar, Smith College, U.S.A., 2003; visiting scholar, University of Groningen in 2003, and visiting fellow, African Studies Centre, Leiden in 2005, both in The Netherlands. In addition, he was a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal, Durban for three years. He was also a senior researcher at the School of Graduate Studies, University of South Africa between 2007 and 2009. He joined the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI), Tshwane University of Technology as a research fellow in 2009. Between 2011 and 2012, he was a fellow of the Africa Institute for South Africa in Pretoria. In January 2021, he joined the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), the University of Cape Town as senior research fellow He is also currently an Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

An Ethos of Transdisciplinarity: Conversations with Toyin Falola, London and New York: Anthem Press, 2025.

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Shadow (Expanded Edition), Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021.

Dani Nabudere’s Afrikology: A Quest for African Holism, Dakar: CODESRIA, 2018.

African Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities and the Democratic Consensus, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Paperback edition released in 2016.

Parricide and a Hardened Forrester, Haarlem, the Netherlands: Skikanda, 2014.

The Social Contract in Africa (editor), Pretoria: AISA, 2014.

Professor Dani Nabudere, special issue of African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development (co-edited with M. Muchie, A. Baskaran and B. Akpor), Vol. 4, No. 1, 2014.

The Africana World: Fragmentation to Unity and Renaissance (co-edited with M. Muchie and M. Matlou), Pretoria: Africa Institute for South Africa, 2014.

Postethnophilosophy, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011.

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Shadow: Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement, London: Adonis & Abbey, 2007.

African Feminisms (editor), special issue of QUEST: An African Journal of Philosophy/Revue Africaine de Philosophie (Editor), Vol. XX, 2006.

Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond: The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa, Dakar: CODESRIA, 2005.

Truth in Politics (co-edited with J. P. Salazar and W. van Binsbergen), special issue of QUEST: An African Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XVI, 1–2, 2004.

“An African Philosophy,” Aeon, March 23, 2026.

“Concepts in African Religious and Philosophical Traditions,” in Augustin F. C. Holl (ed.), The General History of Africa Revisited, Vol. 9, Paris: UNESCO, 2025.

“A Zimbabwean Quandary: Fact and Fiction in a Colonial Script,” in Bill F. Ndi and Hassan Mbiydzenyuy (eds.), Centers and Peripheries in Literatures: Interrogating Hegemonic Canonism, Bamenda: Langaa, RCIPG, 2024.

“Notions of Africanity,” in Zubairu Wai (ed.), Africa Beyond Inventions: Essays in Honour of VY Mudimbe, Switzerland: Springer, 2024.

“Marxism, Communitarianism and Communalism in Africa,” in Andrea Fleschenberg, Kai Kresse and Rosa Cordillera Castillo (eds.), Thinking with the South: Re-framing Research Collaboration amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024.

“Olabiyi Babalola J. Yai (1939–2020): Philosopher, Polymath, Humanist,” Yorùbá Studies Review, 6(2), 239–246, 2022.

“C. A. Diop’s Decolonising Historiography: A Re-reading of Precolonial Black Africa Today,” in K. Kresse and A. Sounaye (eds.), Thinking the Rethinking the of the World, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.

University of Cape Town Profile

African Studies Centre Leiden Profile

PhilPapers Archive