ALI, DUSÉ MOHAMED (aka Dusé Mohamed and Bey Effendi, 21 November 1866–25 June 1945), a Sudanese-Egyptian journalist, playwright, and political activist perhaps best known for his vision of pan-Africanism and African nationalism. Ali was born to an Egyptian father, Abdul Salem Ali (an army officer killed in the nationalist uprising of 1881–1882), and a Sudanese mother. When he was nine years old, he was sent to study in England and lost his Arabic fluency as well as contact with his family. Ali ultimately lived away from his country of birth but traveled widely throughout the African diaspora, living in England, the US, and Nigeria.
At nineteen, Ali embarked upon a career as a stage actor. The following year, he left England for performances in the US and Canada. After working as an actor and in theater for twenty-four years, he began, in 1909, to write and publish articles on Egyptian and African nationalism in the New Age, a weekly socialist literary journal. Shortly after, Ali published In the Land of the Pharaohs: A Short History of Egypt, from the Fall of Ismail to the Assassination of Boutros Pasha, which received critical acclaim. In London, Ali founded the Africa Times and Orient Review, a political and cultural journal that advocated for pan-African and Asian nationalism; the journal became a global forum for intellectuals and activists, covering issues in the US, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. The young Marcus Garvey, who was also living in London then, worked with and for Ali and contributed an article to the journal’s October 1913 issue.
In 1921, Ali traveled to the US and worked at the various Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) organizations led by Marcus Garvey, contributing articles to the Negro World as well as heading the UNIA’s African Affairs department. In the US, Ali, like Garvey, sought to promote a vision of pan-Africanism that included economic sovereignty, and he advocated for commercial links between West Africans and Black Americans. Given White economic supremacy and control, Ali’s concrete efforts to wrest capital for Black self-sufficiency remained largely unsuccessful. He left the US for West Africa in 1931, settling in Lagos, Nigeria. There, he founded and served as Editor of The Comet, which became Nigeria’s largest weekly publication. In Nigeria, his interests shifted to education and the welfare of the Muslim community in Lagos. In his later years, he began serializing his other writings, including his autobiography, in The Comet. When he died in 1945, his funeral was attended by a large crowd that included political, social, and religious leaders from across the world.