He attended Alliance High School in Nairobi and continued his education at University College of Makerere where he graduated in 1953.
"[5] Mbiti taught religion and theology in Makerere University, Uganda, from 1964 to 1974 and was subsequently director of the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Institute in Bogis-Bossey, Switzerland.
He held visiting professorships at universities across the world and published extensively on philosophy, theology and African oral traditions.
Mbiti was clear that his interpretation of these religions was from a firmly Christian perspective, and this aspect of his work was sometimes severely criticized.
From 2005 up until his death in 2019, Mbiti was an emeritus professor at the University of Bern and a retired parish minister to the town of Burgdorf, Switzerland.
Following his career at Makerere, he held visiting professorships at universities across the world where he continued publishing books on philosophy, theology and African oral traditions.
Upon his retirement as a parish minister (1996) and university lecturer (2005) in Switzerland, Mbiti translated the entire New Testament from its original manuscripts in Greek and Hebrew into his mothertongue Kikamba, a Bantu language spoken by the Kamba people of Kenya (and Tanzania).
The Igbo religion fully embodies all characteristics of a traditional world religion, including its beliefs, sacred myths, oral qualities, strong appeal to the hearts of its followers, a high degree of ritualization, and possession of numerous participatory parsonages such as officiating elders, kings, priests and diviners.
Mbiti also discovered that the Igbo religion considers that when an individual dies, their soul or spirit wanders until the body is given a proper burial.
This may have contributed to the emergence of religious conflict between the Igbo and the Christians, and the impression that African traditional religions were rooted in anti-Christian belief.
"[15] Mbiti faced criticism from the Ugandan writer Okot p'Bitek for casting his arguments in intellectual terms that had been established by the west.
Specifically, his biggest criticism was that African cosmologies ultimately align with Christian views of God as omnipotent, omnipresent and eternal.
Mbiti supposedly never responded to the criticism, according to Derek Peterson, a professor of history and African studies at the University of Michigan.