OSUN STATE UNIVERSITY SELECTED TO HOST CARNEGIE AFRICAN DIASPORA FELLOW

Osun State University was selected by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) to host an African Diaspora scholar from the United States to work with on a collaborative project on curriculum development, student training and research. Sunday B. Akinde, associate professor of the Department of Microbiology and director of multidisciplinary research laboratory will lead the project, together with associate professor of biology Olabisi O. Ojo, a Fellow from Albany State University, Georgia, USA.

Dr. Sunday B. Akinde

The project involves strengthening of curricula for both undergraduate and postgraduate training in microbiology, mentoring of postgraduate students and young faculty members, building research capacity in microbial genomics and organization of microbial genomics and surveillance workshop, as well as research collaboration. The effort will have positive impacts on the microbiology program, students and faculties of the university community. The benefits of the molecular workshop will alsobe felt by the larger community.

The Osun State University project is part of a broader initiative that will pair 55CADFP scholars with one of 43higher education institutions and collaborators in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda to work together on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training, and mentoring activities in the coming months.  The visiting Fellows will work with their hosts on a wide range of projects that include controlling malaria, strengthening peace and conflict studies, developing a new master’s degree in emergency medicine, training and mentoring graduate students in criminal justice, archiving African indigenous knowledge, creating low-cost water treatment technologies, building capacity in microbiology and pathogen genomics, and developing a forensic accounting curriculum.To deepen the ties among the faculty members and between their home and host institutions, the program is providing support to several CADFP alumni to enable them to build on successful collaborative projects they conducted in previous years.

Prof Olabisi O. Ojo

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, now in its fifth year, is designed to increase Africa’s brain circulation, build capacity at the host institutions, and develop long-term, mutually-beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. It is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) in Nairobi, Kenya, which coordinates the activities of the Advisory Council. A total of 335 African Diaspora Fellowships have now been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013.

Fellowships match host universities with African-born scholars (individually or in small groups) and cover the expenses for project visits of between 21 and 90 days, including transportation, a daily stipend, and the cost of obtaining visas and health insurance.