News & Announcements

End of year letter from CAS Director, Leonardo Arriola

Berkeley Graduate Division GradNews November 2021, Graduate Student and Alumni Highlights, 2021 Mastercard Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Cecil Chikezie, MEng '22 (BioE)

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, an alum of Sociology and a Rocca Fellow, wins the 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award.

Professor Dan Kammen (Energy and Resource Group) has been selected to serve as senior adviser for energy, climate and innovation for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency announced in October 2021. (Berkeley News article by Kara Manke, 10/20/2021)

In this podcast, Matrix content curator Julia Sizek interviews Juliana Friend, a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology, whose research focuses on the intersection of technology, privacy, and culture. Juliana was also a 2017 Rocca Fellow.

Memory of Dr. Sam Dubal Honored Through $1M Anthropology Fellowship. Dr. Dubal was a CAS Rocca Fellow and an active participant in Center activities.

UC Berkeley scientist and former CAS Rocca Fellow Patrick Gonzalez to advise White House on climate change and biodiversity

The American Political Science Association's Political Science Now newsletter features an article summarizing the new APSR article "Democratic Subversion: Elite Cooptation and Opposition Fragmentation" by CAS Director Leo Arriola, Alumni Anne Meng (U of Virginia) and Jed DeVaro (CSU East Bay).

Four African Languages - Arabic, Amharic, Igbo and Swahili - taught at UC Berkeley Fall 2021.

The UC Berkeley Center for African Studies is a co-sponsor of the 14th Africa Sports Conference. More details are here: https://sportsafrica.org/conferences/conferences2021/

From AllAfrica: Building a Resilient Business Amidst a Pandemic: How a Young Female Entrepreneur from Africa is Keeping a Business Afloat During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID Stories: UCB MCF Scholar teach young Ugandan women to code. This story highlights Gloria Tumushabe, a Mastercard Foundation Scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

End of year letter from CAS Director, Leonardo Arriola

Justine Davis wins WPSA Best Dissertation Award for work on the wartime experiences of civic leaders in Côte d’Ivoire

Op Ed by Poli Sci PhD student, Andrew Wojtanik

Thabani Nyoni, Mastercard Foundation Scholar and Social Welfare Alum, shares insights on COVID-19-Compliant Strategies for PLWA in Africa

Employment Possibility for an African Student/Visitor/Spouse working with Professor Larry Hyman on a minority African language in a Linguistics Field Methods course in Spring 2021. More details below.

Yougin Chung is a new faculty member in ESPM and ERG at UC Berkeley. Here is her website: https://youjinbchung.net/

Four African Languages - Arabic, Amharic, Igbo and Swahili - taught at UC Berkeley Fall 2020.

"Meet Berkeley Journalism’s 7 MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program Alumni," by Sam Goldman, 2020 August 20.

Story published by the Journalism School: https://journalism.berkeley.edu/mastercard-foundation-scholars-alumni/

Berkeley’s Center for African Studies renews Mastercard Foundation grant to support over 100 African students in degree programs

The Center for African Studies welcomes you to visit our YouTube channel.

Astrid R.N. Haas and Rachel Strohm explore a novel idea: integrating urban and rural safety nets in Africa during the pandemic

Jason Corburn, UCB professor of Public Health and City & Regional Planning is lead author on COVID-19 challenges in urban slums and what government can do. Corburn, J., Vlahov, D., Mberu, B. et al. Slum Health: Arresting COVID-19 and Improving Well-Being in Urban Informal Settlements. J Urban Health (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-020-00438-6

Allison Grossman, Rocca Fellow and Political Science Ph.D. student, offers insights on effective public health messaging in West Africa.

A prize of $250 will be awarded to the best senior thesis written by a UC Berkeley undergraduate on a topic related to Africa. The thesis can be wrtitten in any discipline or major. Applicants must submit an online application form, along with submitting a copy of the paper or theis and a letter of recommendation from a faculty advisor to asc@berkeley.edu. Deadline for submission: Friday, April 3, 2020.

CAS 2020-2021 Fellowship Opportunities and Deadlines

Elementary Igbo to start this Fall!  Thursdays and Fridays 12 pm - 2 pm, location to be confirmed. Taught by Ugo Nwokeji and Gladys Ajaelo.

Every semester, UC Berkeley offers many new courses. The Amharic language course offered this spring is especially noteworthy. Except for a brief pilot program in 2006, this is the first semester students are able to take a course in Amharic, one of the languages of Ethiopia, which is spoken by nearly 26 million people worldwide.

While other major cities are blocking private cars to encourage the use of buses, Nairobi is moving in the opposite direction.

Through the Black Country or, The Sources of the Thames Around the Great Shires of Lower England and Down the Severn River to the Atlantic Ocean, an exhibition by Allan DeSouza exhibition, Chair of Art Practice, runs through 4 November at the Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco. Transposing Henry Stanley's 1870 journals, the exhibition inverts the colonial expedition to trace a 2016 fictional journey to discover the source of the River Thames in England.

Sarah Lebu and other UC Berkeley Mastercard Foundation Scholars facilitated a day of community outreach at the Msedo grounds in Mathare, an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. Sarah Lebu writes about this event in a post on Medium.com.

Thanks to all for giving big.

On Thursday, March 1st, Grant Harris shared with the UC Berkeley community his insights on why Africa matters to US national security.

Leonardo Arriola, Director of CAS and Associate Professor of Political Science, and Martha Johnson, Mills College, hosted a workshop at UC Berkeley on 3-4 September 2017 for junior and senior scholars studying the role of African women in politics.

Leo Arriola and Danny Choi share insights on the 2017 Kenyan election on the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog.

CAS Director Leo Arriola joins the editorial board for the African Studies Review.

The Center for African Studies announces The Govan Mbeki Fund, inspired by South African native and Geography Professor Emerita Gillian Hart and energized by Geography and Environmental Science, Policy and Management Professor Louise Fortmann.

The Center for African Studies with support from the Institute of European Studies and the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence at the University of California, Berkeley organized a two-day research workshop: African athletes & migration to the European Union – Beyond Men’s Football on May 9-10, 2017

Photo: The Senegalese Women's Basketball team prior to Rio 2016 (link currently unavailable). Most of the team members play for clubs in Europe.

 Munya Mahiya, a student from Zimbabwe, faced major challenges completing high school while enduring cancer treatments. Now as a MasterCard Foundation Scholar at Berkeley, he is studying disability and poverty with the hope of improving education for disabled students. He points out it's not just an African problem. "Globally, governments are failing to meet the basic needs - and particularly the educational needs - of its citizens living with disabilities," he says. "How we look at disability, distinguish different types of disabilities, and what kind of assistance is required for various disabilities will define how the education system can create opportunities for young people who often aren't included."