WAMBA, Philippe 1971-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born June 3, 1971, in Pomona, CA; died in an automobile accident September 11, 2002, in Kenya. Journalist and author. Though young when he died, Wamba had already begun to build a reputation for his insightful writings about the people of Africa. The son of an African who moved to the United States to work as a professor and then became the leader of a group of rebels in the Congo, Wamba consequently led a peripatetic life. He attended several universities before graduating from Harvard University with an A.B. in 1993 and Columbia University with a master's degree in 1994, and he spent his early life living in cities in both the United States and Africa. During the mid-1990s he worked as a researcher and writer for the W. E. B. du Bois Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then as an editor for Macmillan Publishing. In 1999 he took a job as the online editor-in-chief of Africana.com. He captured his personal feelings about being torn between two worlds in his memoir Kinship: A Family's Journey in Africa and America (1999), and he was researching a new book when he died. Wamba was also a contributor to journals in the United States and Europe, and was especially concerned about the plight of young people in Africa.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2002, section 2, p. 9.

New York Times, September 14, 2002, p. A26.

Los Angeles Times, September 16, 2002, p. B9.

Washington Post, September 15, 2002, p. C8.