Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia University in the United States. He is also the Director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies. He is the current President of the Council for Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Dakar, Senegal.
Mamdani's reputation as an expert in African history, politics and international relations has made him an important voice in contemporary debates about Africa.

His book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism won the 1998 Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association of the USA.
In 2001, he was one of nine scholars to present at the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium.