In Africa and the developing world, the 1960s were marked by intense ideological struggles and heated debates on whether Capitalism or Socialism was the best path to prosperity. No single individual was at the heart of those contestations more than Dr Walter Rodney. Born in the Caribbean, schooled in Europe and fated to work in Africa, where, while at Dar es Salaam University, he produced his influential work, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa". A Senior Writer with the Nation Media Group attended a conference recently held to celebrate Rodney's life and legacy and writes, "many see him as the formidable bridge that linked continental Africa with its diaspora, re-connecting people to the culture from which they had been so brutally severed centuries earlier by slavery."