Akanmu Adebayo

Akanmu Gafari Adebayo (born 5 January 1956) is a Nigerian professor of history at Kennesaw State University. He specializes in African economic history with emphasis on production and distribution of wealth. Adebayo has published widely on various topics on African economy.

Education
Adebayo earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees all in History at the Obafemi Awolowo University in 1979, 1982, and 1986 respectively. His Ph.D. thesis on the history of revenue allocation in Nigeria was revised into a monograph, Embattled Federalism: A History of Revenue Allocation in Nigeria, 1946-1990, released in 1993.

Career
Adebayo's research and publications explore topics in African Economic History, Chinese and Asian economic relations with African countries, braindrain, leadership and governance in Africa.

As full-time, part-time, or visiting professor, Adebayo has taught in Nigeria, Canada, Germany, and the U.S. He lectured at Obafemi Awolowo University for 11 years, before moving to York University, Toronto for a stint as a Visiting Associate Professor (1991-1992). In 1994, he was a Research Fellow at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin. As a faculty member at Kennesaw State University since 1995, Adebayo has held various positions including Director of the Center for Conflict Management (2011-2016); executive director of the Institute for Global Initiatives (2003-2009).

Adebayo served as founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, and Perspective. He is the Series Editor for the Lexington Books' "Conflict and Security in the Developing World" book series.

Adebayo received Kennesaw State’s Tommy Holder Award in 2009, and the Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth Faculty Award for Distinguished International Achievement in 2019. In August 2016, Adebayo was inducted as an Overseas Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.

Selected publications
"The new African diaspora: engaging the question of brain drain-brain Gain." Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective 6, no. 1 (2011): 61–89.

"Currency devaluation and rank: The Yoruba and Akan experiences." African Studies Review 50, no. 2 (2007): 87–109.

Culture, politics and money among the Yoruba. Transaction Publishers, 2000 (with Toyin Falola).

"Jangali: Fulani pastoralists and colonial taxation in Northern Nigeria." The International Journal of African Historical Studies 28, no. 1 (1995): 113–150.

"Money, credit, and banking in precolonial Africa. The Yoruba experience." Anthropos (1994): 379–400.

"The production and export of hides and skins in colonial Northern Nigeria, 1900–1945." The Journal of African History 33, no. 2 (1992): 273–300.

"Of man and cattle: A reconsideration of the traditions of origin of pastoral Fulani of Nigeria." History in Africa 18 (1991): 1-21.

"Taming the Nomads: The Colonial State, the Fulani Pastoralists and the Production of Clarified Butter Fat (CBF) in Nigeria, 1930–1952." Transafrican Journal of History (1991): 190–212.