Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe

Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe (2 October 1893 – 1944) was a Nigerian researcher and pan-African anti-colonial activist. After studying in Nigeria, Britain and the United States, Fadipe taught economics at the Achimota College in the early 1930s. He then returned to Britain, where he completed an anthropology doctorate at the London School of Economics, on the sociology of the Yoruba people, and participated in anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist activism.

Early life Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe was born 2 October 1893 at Oko-Saje, Abeokuta, Nigeria. His father, I. O. Fadipe, was a Baptist pastor at the town's mission and his mother worked as a trader.

He attended a primary school of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and graduated from the CMS Grammar School, Lagos. After his studies, he became a clerk in the colonial government of Nigeria before becoming a personal assistant to the manager of Barclays Bank in Lagos.

Move to Britain and America In 1925, he moved to Britain as there was no educational institute beyond secondary school in Nigeria at the time. When in London he studied at the London School of Economics for four years. Then, he gained a fellowship to study history and internationalism at the Quaker Woodbrooke College in Selly Oak, Birmingham, where he received a diploma cum laude. A thesis he wrote while studying at the college – which criticized the white-majority governments of Nigeria and South Africa for detribalization of the indigenous black populations of their countries and denying them the legal rights and opportunities afforded to the white minority – was reprinted in Woodbrooke's official journal in 1930.

Fadipe spent the rest of his life in London and was involved in anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist activism. He wrote and worked with the West African Students' Union, the League of Coloured Peoples, collaborated with black activists such as George Padmore and Jomo Kenyatta, and was in touch with Ralph Bunche and Nnamdi Azikiwe. In addition, he also worked with white-led organizations in Britain, such as the National Council for Civil Liberties, and white activists such as Norman Leys and Horace Alexander. Many of these people were Africanists, or involved in peace movements at the time. Fadipe also wrote for a number of newspapers where he condemned the weak international response to the invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, and also wrote for the West Africa magazine.

Still struggling with his finances, Fadipe also worked as a clerk, Yoruba language instructor, and translator.

Death Fadipe died in 1944 from a brain haemorrhage at the age of 51. He was described as being "killed by overwork and perhaps by frustration: he had to combine earning a minimal living at menial tasks with total devotion to the cause of Africa".