Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922-1999), the first President of Tanzania, was a man whose political life was uniquely and inextricably bound into the history of the nation he created. This book presents the first truly rounded portrait of Nyerere's early life, from his birth in 1922 until his graduation from Edinburgh in 1952, enabling us to see his later political achievements in a new light. It was after returning to Tanganyika that "Mwalimu" (the teacher)formally entered politics, and led efforts to deliver Tanganyika to independence. Drawing on interviews with his contemporaries and archival sources including his letters as a student and colonial authorities files on him, this biography brings a new perspective on how the scholarship that Nyerere engaged with as a young man influenced his ideas of the uhuru movement against colonial rule and, later, the ujamaa policy of African socialism that so defined his leadership of an independent Tanzania.

Thomas Molony is Senior Lecturer in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh.