Born in Manjacaze, Mozambique, the son of a tribal chief, Eduardo Mondlane worked for the UN and was also a History and Sociology Professor at Syracuse University, New York. As the president of FRELIMO, he successfully promoted a coalition with the different independence movements on the 25th of July 1962 in Tanzania.
He attended Witwatersrand University in South Africa until forced to withdraw by the new apartheid-oriented government. Interested in the fate of his native land, Mondlane went to Portugal to study. Finding discrimination there as well, he secured a scholarship to study in the United States. He began with a B.A. from Oberlin, followed by an M.A. from Northwestern and a Ph.D. from Harvard. His academic field was anthropology; his field of action became African politics
In 1957 Mondlane was a research officer in the Trustee Department of the United Nations, a position that led him back to Africa and, in 1962, to Dar Es-Salaam where he took the lead in developing a movement for national liberation. Tragically, he was denied the fruits of his vision and leadership by his assassination in 1969 in Dar Es-Salaam.
Mondlane's cosmopolitanism, his marriage to a white American woman, and above all his American education, rendered him particularly suited to forge a broad and inclusive nationalist movement.
In 1969 the Portugese assassinated him by a postal parcel concealing an explosive device. Nevertheless he remains universally credited as the father of Mozambiques's independence.
The Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane Scholarship is offered by the Oberlin College in Ohio, USA, and is designed to continue the outreach that enabled Mr. Mondlane to attend Oberlin College. Any citizen from a sub-Saharan African country who is applying to the Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences is eligible for this scholarship.