Dr. Duncan Omanga is an educationist, program manager, and academic with a deep commitment to the study of Africa. He currently serves as Associate Director at the Center for African Studies (CAS) and Manager of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the University of California, Berkeley.
Prior to joining CAS, Dr. Omanga was a Program Officer in the Africa Section of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington, D.C. He previously served as Senior Program Officer at the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in New York, where he co-led initiatives under the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) and Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa (NextGen) programs.
Before transitioning to the U.S.-based policy and research sector, Dr. Omanga was Head of the Department of Publishing and Media Studies at Moi University in Kenya, where he also served as a Senior Lecturer in Media and Journalism Studies. He has extensive experience teaching and supervising graduate students across Eastern Africa, particularly in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Dr. Omanga was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2018–2019), and a 2015–2016 African Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for African Studies. A 2014 alumnus of the APN–SSRC fellowship, he was nominated for the 2017 Mary Kingsley Zochonis Lecture (ASAUK, SOAS), where he presented research on social media, political devolution, and public participation in Kenya.
His research explores the intersections of digital technologies, security, and democracy in Africa, and he has published widely in both regional and disciplinary academic journals. His most recent work is the co-edited volume Digital Technologies, Elections and Campaigns in Africa. Beyond academia, Dr. Omanga is a frequent commentator and thought leader on issues related to higher education in Africa.
He holds a Ph.D. from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
