Duse Mohamed Ali belonged to the older generation of Pan-African leaders. He had been one of Marcus Garvey’s early mentors, but later disagreed with him and broke with the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1922. His subsequent career represented a strand of Pan-Africanism that sought racial advancement through large-scale commercial enterprise undertaken by people from Africa and the diaspora.

By 1940, Ali had ceased to be an active commercial Pan-Africanist and had settled into his final years as proprietor and editor of The Comet, a locally influential magazine in Lagos. To a rising generation of Nigerians, he was respected but remote, surrounded by a mysterious and exciting past. His later political tone was less fiery, particularly in his criticism of British imperialism.

Ali nevertheless retained a public role. In 1944 he chaired the inaugural meeting of the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons in Lagos, almost his last public act before his death in 1945. His assessment of Garvey also preserved his place as an interpreter of Pan-African political influence, especially the importance of self-reliance and a permanent home for people of African origin.