Thomas P. Ofcansky (1947–2016)

EDITOR’S NOTE
This belated testimonial to Thomas Ofcansky was inadvertently omitted from an earlier issue and is published here for our readers’ information. While not an “academic” in the conventional sense—he taught at university for only a few years before pursuing a career with the United States government—Dr. Ofcansky published several scholarly books and articles and contributed to many of the standard reference works and bibliographies which scholars of East and Northeast Africa regularly consult. Those of us who sought to keep abreast of the turbulent events in the Horn during the decades from 1980 to 2010 could always rely on Tom’s comprehensive postings of news stories and commentaries on and about the region; and the many sources he identified and indexed continue to serve researchers who work on the modern history and politics of the continent. He was a unique and gifted scholar whose contributions warrant our attention and remembrance.

In early 2016 one of the most productive and trustworthy scholars on affairs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan, Thomas Paul Ofcansky, died in Washington, DC. His death after an extended illness on January 21 at the relatively young age of 68 shocked and saddened his friends and colleagues, who had come to regard him as an authority on a range of issues in countries in the Horn and Eastern Africa.

Born in a small town east of Pittsburgh on 1 May 1947, he attended Point Park College in Pittsburgh for his undergraduate degree. He then earned an MPA in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh in 1976. That same year he enrolled at West Virginia University where he studied under Robert Maxon and Roger Yeager, with both of whom he later shared in publications. He received a doctorate in history in 1981 after having completed a dissertation on wildlife conservation in Kenya and Tanzania during British colonial rule. It marked the beginning of his lifelong devotion to the peoples and nations of Eastern Africa, in particular, Ethiopia and Kenya. The dissertation appeared in print in 2002 under the title Paradise Lost: A History of Game Preservation in East Africa, in which he examined the negative impact of colonialism, economic development, and tourism on East African wildlife.

Tom taught briefly in West Virginia, but he spent his professional life as an employee of the Department of Defense and later of the U.S. State Department. His career with DOD began in 1982 when he became a historian and analyst in a succession of posts with the U.S. Air Force beginning at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and concluding at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, where he served as an assistant professor of African Studies in the Air War College. Continuing his career with the military, he accepted a position as a senior analyst with the Department of Defense in Washington, DC, in 1987, and then in 1998 he joined the Department of State’s Office of Analysis for Africa, where he remained until his retirement in 2011. Wherever he served, he distinguished himself as an expert on economic, military, and political affairs in Africa. His penchant for detailed, comprehensive research earned him the respect of his peers and of his superiors for the quality of his reports and briefings. His reputation was such that a British associate once referred to him as “the legendary Tom Ofcansky.”

Beyond his duties with DOD and the State Department, Tom actively contributed to scholarship about Africa; indeed, he drove himself to do so. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, he published widely on topics in his areas of expertise, authoring books and contributing to academic journals, newspapers, and reference volumes. Among the latter were annual updates in such standards as Africa South of the Sahara (London, Europa Publications) and Africa Contemporary Record (London, Africa Research, Ltd.). He published articles in leading journals on a variety of subjects such as political issues, biographies of colonial officials, and bibliographies of military affairs, often as they pertained to countries of the Horn. Aside from his dissertation, he published the following books: British...