Kwamina Panford from Northeastern University has been awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program to work at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) of the University of Cape Coast (UCC). Prof. Panford who has arrived on campus will work with the Director of IDS, Professor Patrick Agbesinyale to publish a baseline study of Ghana’s new oil districts, conduct other research, develop curriculum and host workshops on Ghana’s new petroleum industry. Professor Panford’s project titled “Toward Sustainable use of Africa’s Natural Resources: The Case of Ghana’s Oil and Gas” is one of 43 projects that pairs African Diaspora scholars with one of 35 higher education institutions and collaborators in Africa to work together on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training and mentoring activities in the coming months. The visiting Fellow will work with research fellows at UCC on a wide range of projects that include research in banking and finance; developing curriculum in therapeutics and environmental toxicology; mentoring faculty in computer science; and teaching and mentoring graduate students in media and communications and in a new interdisciplinary public health programme. The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme is providing support to several programme alumni to enable them to build on successful collaborative projects they conducted in previous years. The Programme, now in its fourth year, is designed to reverse Africa’s brain drain, 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 282 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 14 and 90 days, including transportation, a daily stipend, and the cost of obtaining visas and health insurance. Professor Panford’s fellowship is from May to August, 2017.
