Dick Hodder was a leading authority on the geography and development of Africa.
Born into a Salvation Army family in 1923 in Coalville, Leicestershire, he absorbed an enduring Christian ethic, but chose to leave behind the demanding conventions of the Salvationist. After a year at Liverpool University, Hodder started military service in 1942. Soon after completing training he landed at Anzio, but was wounded and captured. After a period in hospital in Italy he spent the rest of the war a prisoner in eastern Germany.
Back home he gained an Oriel organ scholarship at Oxford. A life of music seemed a fair recompense for the lost war years, but a tutor cautioned that a poor future lay ahead and he enrolled instead on a geography course. His first academic post was at the University of Malaya in Singapore in 1952, where he studied the environments and societies of Asia and Africa. His next post was in the University of Ibadan in Nigeria from 1956 to 1963. His work on traditional markets is widely cited, and his years in Nigeria provided experience which would source the analysis of a number of books on African economic and political development.
In 1964 he came back to a temporary post in the University of Glasgow, followed by a post in London at Queen Mary College. In 1970 he began 14 years at the London School of Oriental and African Studies as Professor of the Geography of Africa. There he was part of a large and experienced faculty devoted to the study of late colonial and post-colonial Africa.
Hodder also made important contributions to African studies as director of the International African Institute in London. He made sure that there was a ready welcome for visiting academics from Africa.
Advertisement
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, by three children of his first marriage, two children of his second marriage and by two stepdaughters.
Bramwell William (Dick) Hodder, geographer, was born on November 15, 1923. He died on September 12, 2006, aged 82