Chika Mba is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, where his teaching and research cut across the broad domains of African philosophy, decolonial thought, human rights, and global justice. His work centers the understanding of Africa and Africans in key debates in philosophy and the humanities more broadly, raising challenging questions to hegemonic discourses about human nature, global justice, (global) culture and human rights. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
He is the recipient of many international research fellowships and sponsorship awards, including the African Humanities Programme by the American Council of Learned Societies; the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA’s) Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing; the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University’s (UHURU) Postdoctoral Fellowship. In August 2022, he formed the Forum for the Advancement of Academic Freedom in Africa (FAAFA) and convened a series of panel discussions on academic freedom at the University of Ghana in the same month.
In October 2022, Mba received the Scholars at Risk Mellon-funded fellowship on academic freedom for his proposed research work on the theme “Academic Freedom, Neoliberal Marketization of Higher Education, and Democracy in Africa.” He is Principal Investigator (PI) for the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa’s (MIASA) thematic focus on “Human Rights”.