Study following nomadic Africans engages British polymath (7,5)
I believe the answer is:
francis bacon
'study' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both people as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'nomadic africans engages british polymath' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'british' could be 'b' (abbreviation e.g. in 'BBC') and 'b' is found in the answer.
an anagram of 'africans' is 'francisa' which is within the remaining letters.
The remaining letters 'con' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'following' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for francis bacon that I've seen before include "Renaissance man" , "Statesman and philosopher, 1561-1626 - painter, 1909-92" , "English philosopher, d. 1626 - Dublin-born painter, d. 1992" .)