Chinweizu was born in 1943 in the town of Eluoma, in Isuikwuato in the part of Eastern Region of Nigeria that is known today as Abia State. He was educated at Government Secondary School, Afikpo, and later attended college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studied philosophy and mathematics, earning a bachelor of science degree in 1967, the year of the outbreak of civil war in Nigeria, which lasted two and a half years. At the time living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Chinweizu founded and edited the "Biafra Review" (1969–70).