Nwando Achebe

Nwando Achebe // ^ⓘ (born 7 March 1970), is a Nigerian-American academic, academic administrator, feminist scholar and multi-award-winning historian.^[1] She is University Distinguished Professor,^[2] Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History,^[3] and the Associate Dean for Access, Faculty Development, and Strategic Implementation in the College of Social Science^[4] at Michigan State University. She is also founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History.^[5] 19th Century, 20th Century, Cultural, Political, Religious, Social, Women & Gender^[6]

Nwando Achebe
Nationality	Nigerian-American
Relatives	Chinua Achebe (father)
Philosophical work
School	West Africanist, oral historian, feminism
Institutions	Michigan State University, University of California, Los Angeles
Main interests	Women, gender, oral history, Sexuality, Africa, West Africa
Notable works	Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland: 1900–1960, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe, History of West Africa E-Course Book, A Companion to African History, Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective, Female Kings and Merchant Queens in Africa.
Website	nwandoachebe.com

Background

Nwando Achebe was born in Enugu, eastern Nigeria^[7] to Nigerian writer, essayist and poet, Chinua Achebe and Christie Chinwe Achebe, a professor of education.^[8] She is the spouse of Folu Ogundimu, professor of journalism at Michigan State University and mother of a daughter, Chino.^[9] Her older brother, Chidi Chike Achebe is a physician-executive.

Education and career

Achebe received her Ph.D. in African History from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000. An oral historian by training, her areas of expertise are West African History, women, gender and sexuality histories. In 1996 and 1998, she served as a Ford Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Scholar-in-Residence at The Institute of African Studies and The Department of History and International Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her first academic position was as an assistant professor of history at the College of William and Mary. She then moved to Michigan State University in 2005 as a tenured associate professor, Professor in 2010, and is presently the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor.

Scholarship

She has published six books. Her first book, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900–1960, was published by Heinemann in 2005. The book has been described by scholars such as Isidore Okpewho, and Obioma Nnaemeka as a significant contribution to African historiography, gender studies, as well as political and religious change during the colonial period. Reviewers Simon Ottenberg^[10] and Edna G. Bay^[11] praised Achebe for her detailed analysis of women’s economic and spiritual roles—including market control and broader community influence—and emphasized that her rich field data is invaluable for understanding Igbo women’s agency in colonial-era society. The book introduces the concept of “female principle” as a theoretical framework, and examines examines northern Igbo lives in ways that previous studies have not, presenting them as active participants in shaping the region.^[12] Throughout the study northern Igbo gendered histories are used to raise questions about prevailing assumptions that characterize African women as subordinate, offering evidence of female power and authority in the society.^[13] Achebe identifies religious, economic and political structures that enabled women to attain measures of power during the precolonial (tupu ndi ocha abia period), and examines how colonialism and missionary activities affected those structures and women's choices. The book engages extensively with indigenous interpretations and meanings.

Her second book, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe, was published in 2011 by Indiana University Press. It is a full-length biography on the only female warrant chief and king in British Africa. The book has won three prestigious awards: the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, The Barbara "Penny" Kanner Book Prize and the Gita Chaudhuri Book Prize.^[14] A review in the Leeds African Studies Bulletin describes it “one of the most compellingly argued, rigorously researched scholarly writings in the fields of history and women studies in colonial Igbo society, Nigeria and Africa."^[15] The biography presents Ahebi Ugbabe (c. 1885–1948), as an extraordinary Igbo woman who, over the course of her life, transformed herself into a female king. Achebe uses extensive oral sources to explore the shifting bases of gendered power under British indirect rule, showing how Igbo women and men negotiated and shaped the colonial order. The book situates Ahebi's life within the spectrum of gendered transformations—including the female masculinities of female Headman, female Warrant Chief, female King and female husband—while also addressing the limitations of such transformations. Ultimately, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria offers a compelling analysis of one woman's agency in remapping the political and gendered landscapes of her district during the colonial period.

Dr. Achebe is a co-author of the 2018 History of West Africa E-Course Book (British Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2018), “a textbook aimed at West African students taking West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) History Paper 1, “West Africa and the Wider World from Earliest Times to 2000.”^[16] She is also co-editor with William Worger and Charles Ambler of A Companion to African History (Wiley Blackwell, 2019), and with Claire Robertson, Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Achebe's 2020 Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa is published by Ohio University Press.^[17] Laura Seay of The Washington Post, writes of Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa, “A brilliant, thoroughly engaging and accessible book, ‘Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa’ is a fascinating and quick read that shows the many, many ways that women across the African continent have always led and continue to lead. It lays permanently to rest the notion of African women as passive or powerless and shows that women play key roles in every sector of society. It also makes a powerful case that African societies have more in common in this regard than differences, despite the continent's size and diversity. Finally, Achebe makes a welcome contribution to efforts to bring analysis of queer identities to African Studies, showing definitively that notions of gender and sexuality have long been fluid and adaptable on the continent."^[18]

Grants and awards

Nwando Achebe has received grants from the Wenner Gren Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright-Hays, Ford Foundation, the World Health Organization and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also the recipient of three book awards.^[19]

Publications

• Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900–1960. ISBN 0325070784
• The Female King of Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe. ISBN 0253222486
• History of West Africa E-Course Book. ISBN 978-9983960204
• A Companion to African History. ISBN 047065631X
• Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective. ISBN 9780299321109
• Female Monarchs and Merchants Queens in Africa. ISBN 0821424076