Katherine El-Salahi ( Levine; November 1945 – 6 February 2026) was a British social anthropologist, publisher, and anti-apartheid activist. She was a founding editor of the Review of African Political Economy and coordinated the Bellagio Publishing Network from 1993.
Biography El-Salahi was born Katherine Levine in November 1945. She studied social anthropology at the University of Cambridge and completed a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, with fieldwork linked to the University of Dar es Salaam. She married the Sudanese painter Ibrahim El-Salahi.
In the 1970s, El-Salahi was a founding editor of the Review of African Political Economy. A 2024 article in the journal credited her, alongside Jan Burgess and Judy Mohan, with support that was essential to the journal's survival. In the early 1980s, she moved to Qatar, where her husband held a position with the Ministry of Information. From 1993, she served as coordinator of the Bellagio Publishing Network, an organisation that promoted scholarly publishing from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In 1998, she and her husband settled in Oxford.
In 1970, El-Salahi joined the London Recruits, a clandestine network of volunteers who carried out operations for the African National Congress. In 1971, she travelled to southern Africa to transport arms and ANC operatives from Zambia to Botswana. Her daughter, journalist Reya El-Salahi, interviewed her about these activities on This American Life in 2017.
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