Physician Africanus Horton

Africanus Horton was born in 1835 in Freetown, Sierra Leone - his parents were Nigerian. He became a respected physician, soldier, and one of the first modern African political theorists during colonial rule, and all in the 1800s.

Committed to his heritage Africanus changed his name from his birth name, James Horton, to Africanus later in life.

Dr Horton was initially educated in Freetown, though travelled to Britain in 1855 when he was awarded a War Office scholarship to study medicine. He studied at King’s College London 

and the University of Edinburgh. Despite being thousands of miles from home he excelled and qualified as a doctor, and was appointed Staff Assistant Surgeon in the British Army in 1859. Dr Horton served across West Africa, including the Gambia, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast - modern-day Ghana. In effect his role wasn't just medical, it was also symbolic - Dr Horton stood as a living challenge to racist ideas that Africans were unfit for leadership or intellectual work.

As well a excelling in the medical and military fields, he also wrote. His writing challenged European voices claiming Africans were intellectually and morally inferior.
 
His first book, published in 1868, West African Countries and Peoples, directly challenged these beliefs and called out European misconceptions. He also laid down a vision for African led progress. In his second book The Political Economy of British West Africa, published in 1865, Dr Horton made the case for African self-governance - nearly a century before most African countries achieved independence. He believed Africans should be running their own governments and developing their own institutions. He refused to accept colonial limitations.

Dr Horton is widely seen as one of the first African nationalists. He wasn’t just writing in theory - he created infrastructure for Black-led growth and invested in mining, banking, and education in West Africa.

Dr Africanus Horton died in 1883 at just 48 years of age.

Read about Africanus Horton the Activist HERE. Want information about medical jobs? Click HERE