Dani Wadada Nabudere (15 December 1932 – 9 November 2011) was a Ugandan academic, Pan-Africanist, lawyer, politician, author, political scientist, and development specialist.
At the time of his passing, he was a professor at the Islamic University and executive director of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute, Mbale, Uganda.
Among his issues of engagement were food security, peace, knowledge heritages, Africa's contribution to humanizing the world, lifelong learning, cross-border solidarities, international political economy, Pan-Africanism, defense of the commons, cognitive justice, community sites of knowledge, restorative governance, economy, and justice.
Over the last ten years of his life, Nabudere was working on setting up grassroots organizations to assist rural communities and raise their voices over issues that concern their lives.
UGASA was engaged in helping to raise the political consciousness of young Ugandans studying or working in the UK and in Europe.
[6][7] As an academic, Nabudere was pivotal in at least three politically and pedagogically significant debates at the University of Dar es Salaam in the late 1960s and the decade of the 1970s.
[12] It was partly inspired by Nabudere's book 'Imperialism and Revolution in Uganda' (1980) and its critique by Mahmood Mamdani, Harkishan Bhagat, and Karim Hirji.
Later these discussions were reproduced as a book called 'The Dar es Salaam Debate on Class, State and Imperialism' (1982), which was edited by Yash Tandon, with a foreword by Mohammad Babu, the well-known Marxist revolutionary from Zanzibar.
[14] The significance of this debate, latent when it was taking place, became clear in the early months of 1979, as those same very issues took on a practical political salience after Amin's invasion of Tanzania in December 1978.
Should he proceed to Kampala, with his army thus effectively becoming an "occupation force", or should he try to forge a united Ugandan political front to take over the reins of government?
When the UNLF was established and a ruling body for it formed known as the National Consultative Council (NCC), Nabudere was elected chairman of its political and diplomatic committee.
In September 1979 he was ousted from power by a vote of no confidence moved in the transitional parliament, the NCC chaired by Edward Rugumayo, if democratically removed, and replaced by President Godfrey Binaisa.
It was the Binaisa administration that was then removed from power by the Military Commission of the UNLF led by Paulo Muwanga and Yoweri Museveni, and probably backed by Tanzania.
Later, a summary of the book was published by Fahamu, titled, 'The Crash of International Finance-Capital and Its Implications for the Third World' (2009), to which Yash Tandon wrote a foreword.