Prof. Iribe Mwangi, the Chairman, Department of Kiswahili and Prof. Mungai Mutonya of Washington University in St. Louis, have been awarded the prestigious Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship.

The collaborative proposal titled ‘Collaborative Research and Graduate Training and/or Mentoring: Interdisciplinary Focus on Language Contact‚ Migration‚ Innovation‚ and Identity’ is based in the linguistics field of studies.

“Our proposal has been selected for funding by the Advisory Council of Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) after several competitive rounds of evaluation. The proposal is gauged among many others, the process is very competitive,” said an elated Prof. Mwangi. “The proposal must have an African diaspora researcher. In our case, we have Prof. Mutonya. We wrote a collaborative proposal and the sociolinguistic research we are doing is now fully funded.  We were to start this year but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will commence next year. The process started in December 2019.”

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) is a scholar fellowship program for educational projects at African higher education institutions. Offered by IIE in collaboration with the United States Africa (USIU-Africa), the program is funded by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY). A total of 471 African Diaspora Fellowships have been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013. CADFP exemplifies CCNY's enduring commitment to higher education in Africa. IIE manages and administers the program, including applications, project requests and fellowships. USIU-Africa provides strategic direction through the Advisory Council.

Prof. Iribe acknowledged the Dean, Faculty of Arts, Prof. Ephraim Wahome, for the role he played during the application process.