By AfriWave
On Thursday night, 8 October, a Zimbabwean walked onto the stage at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre to present a medal to another Zimbabwean. The man receiving it was James Manyika, a senior executive at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, where he works across artificial intelligence, computing and science. The man presenting was the businessman Strive Masiyiwa, who won the same honour in 2024.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Medal is Harvard’s highest honour in African and African American studies, given for contributions to African and African American culture and the life of the mind. Manyika was one of eight medalists this year. The others were Angela Bassett, Didier Drogba, Theaster Gates, Reed Hastings, Mavis Staples, Lena Waithe and, posthumously, the attorney and civic leader Fletcher “Flash” Wiley, whose wife accepted on his behalf. More than 500 people filled the theatre, according to The Harvard Crimson.
From Harare to Oxford to the top of tech
Manyika’s route to that stage started at home. He earned a first-class engineering degree at the University of Zimbabwe, then went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Today he leads work at Alphabet that spans AI, computing and science. Harvard’s own listing calls him a “Technologist, Business Executive & Philanthropist.”
He joins a long list of past medalists. Zimbabwe’s The Herald pointed to Wole Soyinka and John Lewis. Other accounts of the honour also list Muhammad Ali, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Harry Belafonte.
What Zimbabweans said
The reaction back home was warm and personal. One tribute recalled meeting Manyika in Harare, where the talk over coffee was about artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. Another summed up the mood in one line: “Zimbabwe has never been short of talent.”
That line deserves a second look. Talent is not the hard part. The hard part is the distance between talent and the systems that make room for it: the labs, the funding, the regulators and the classrooms. Many of AfriWave’s readers have made that crossing themselves, and many are still working out what they owe the places they left.
Why it matters for the diaspora
There is a practical point for AfriWave’s community too. The tools that will shape African classrooms, farms and businesses over the next decade are being built by people who work in AI, and a Zimbabwean now stands among them. Whether that helps the continent depends on who gets to decide what the technology is for.
What he does with that position is the real story to watch. A medal records what someone has done. It does not say what comes next.
Reader, who is the Zimbabwean, or African, whose work abroad you most want the continent to benefit from, and what would bring that work home?
Sources: The Herald, “Harvard honour highlights Zim’s influence in the world” (15 October 2026); The Harvard Crimson, 2026 Du Bois Medal recipients (9 October 2026); Harvard Hutchins Center for African and African American Research; community tributes shared on social media.
