CADFP Selects SU's Namwamba to Help Boost Higher Ed Research in Africa

SALISBURY, MD---A Salisbury University professor will return to his native Kenya this summer to help boost the research capabilities of higher education in Africa.

Funded by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP), Dr. Fulbert Namwamba of SU’s Geography and Geosciences and Environmental Studies departments will spend two months at Kaimosi Friends University College (KAFUCO), leading a project to use international linkages to merge research, innovation and outreach.

“The big paradox is that Africa suffers desperate shortage of scholars and experts, while African scholars are ‘moving mountains’ in U.S. academia,” he said. “I applied to help reverse this ‘brain drain’ and convert it to a ‘brain gain.’” 

Hosted by Dr. Annette Busula, KAFUCO’s biological sciences chair, Namwamba will use his expertise in environmental conservation and his connections in that region to help boost KAFUCO’s research capabilities. 

His immediate goals are to help develop research programs and policies. He plans to create on-campus and satellite field stations and link them with community organizations to provide outdoor research for graduate and undergraduate students. 

He also will survey and sharpen the grant-writing skills of faculty, and assist them with using emerging technologies. In addition, he plans to expand exchange programs for undergraduates and faculty, benefitting SU and KAFUCO.

Namwamba hopes the project will help KAFUCO and the many other new and emerging universities in Africa to “catapult their research capabilities and resources into the 21st century.” Such colleges are struggling to accommodate bulging numbers of students and are short on staff, facilities and materials, he said, so new classes are at the expense of research.

“I view myself as a ‘son of Africa’ and an American scholar,” he said. “I hope my relocation, however brief, will help the goal of moving Africa forward.”

Namwamba, who is fluent in Swahili and Luhyia, previously was a CADFP fellow at University of Kabianga (UoK), and he actively manages a forest restoration project in Nandi County. Both are in the same region in Western Kenya. 

He also co-leads an SU Winter Term Global Seminar to that area, allowing students to stay at the Weaver Bird Research Center and study ecology, conduct research, and contribute to sustainability projects with UoK, Kisii University and the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute. 

Namwamba earned a bachelor’s from the University of Nairobi before coming to the U.S. for a master’s in geochemistry from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. in environmental science from Iowa State University. Before joining SU in 2016, he was a professor at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, LA. His areas of expertise are geology, geographic information sciences and remote sensing, as well as water resources and green infrastructure.

Since 2013, CADFP has awarded 385 African diaspora fellowships to African-born scholars for travel to Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.  Funded by a Carnegie Corporation of New York grant, the program is offered by the Institute for International Education along with the U.S. International University-Africa. 

For more information, call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU website at www.salisbury.edu.