E-BOARD

Dr. Choti oversees alumni and student engagement initiatives and activities for the African Studies Center. She facilitates communication with African alumni and works with Africa-related student groups to design a series of activities that help the larger MSU community learn more about Africa and the learning opportunities available through the African Studies Center. Dr. Choti is a co-founder of MSU African Female Students Empowerment Program (AFSEP) and advises many Africa-oriented student organizations.

Emmanuel Chima is a PhD student within the school of social work with research interests surrounding psychosocial wellbeing among refugee youth and older adults and experiences of forced displacement, youth transitions, and aging.

I greatly appreciate Kongamano's mandate of community service in furthering knowledge on and engagement of Africa and related programming.

I am a PhD student in the department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, MSU. My research is channeled towards developing more effective therapeutics that will shorten the treatment duration of tuberculosis and prevent the rise of drug-resistant strains. This will go a long way in the eradication of tuberculosis, a disease which is prevalent in the developing parts of the world.

In addition to my love for biomedical research, I am passionate about teaching and entrepreneurship. I am particularly excited about the Kongamano group, especially the sense of community among the group, and I see it as an opportunity to learn more about different parts of the Motherland.

Abdul (Muta) is a current Master’s student in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program at Michigan State University as a Daryl and Glenda Minor Fellow. From 2017-2018, Abdul was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) at MSU. Previously, Abdul worked at United World Colleges East Africa in Tanzania as a Swahili Foreign Language teacher and a residential parent for the past three years. Abdul’s interests lie in language learning and teaching in small and large classrooms. In Project PLAY, Abdul contributes to the development and piloting of Project PLAY by sharing insight related to the cultural context of teaching and teacher preparation in Tanzania.

Sarah is an MSU alumnus with degrees in Global and International Studies and Political Science from the College of Social Science. She served as Kongamano's RSO Coordinator during the 2017-18 and 2021-22 academic years and as President during the academic years of 2018-20. She is currently studying at Tulane University to receive my MPH in International Health and Sustainable Development.

She is passionate about understanding the impact of colonialism on East African health and social policy today. Kongamano allows her to learn about and interact with Africanist students and research in an informal and collaborative way.

Joe G. Greaves is a deputy director for research and statistics in the Strategic Research, Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation Directorate in the Civil Service Agency (CSA), Liberia. He leads, coordinates, and conducts research on e-pay and payroll management policy framework targeting public sector reforms, such as eliminating ghost names and double dippers on the central government payroll. Before this job, he worked as a policy research associate at the Ministry of Finance & Development Planning in Liberia, where he contributed to the policy agenda of the government to reduce the total public sector wage bill to help the government stabilize the economy. He holds a Master of Economics degree in quantitative economics from Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, China. He is 2021/2022 Humphrey fellow studying economic development at Michigan State University. His research key question during his fellowship year is: what practical strategies can governments in urban poor cities adopt to increase and grow revenue streams from waste producers and polluters in order to better manage trash and be more sustainable?

My Name is Tutilo Mudumba, I am a member of the Kongamano e-board. I am a MSU alumnus having graduated from the College of Agriculture and Naturally Resources. I have served as a Research Associate in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. I am a Spartan for life!

I am a member of the Kongamano fraternity because it is my way of keeping up with the entire community of MSU and beyond that, I would otherwise drift away from. Kongamano means sharing, learning, and growth to me.

Jorem is a research associate with the Global Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Michigan State University. His research interests revolve around the cultural adaptation of tools to assess developmental and behavioral disorders in low-resourced countries.

Eben is generally interested in agricultural problems that transcend geographical and cultural boundaries and so warrant the attention and intervention of agents that are external to any particular setting. This interest is mainly informed by his personal, academic, and professional experiences with rural livelihoods, which are usually agriculture-based/related and are confronted by issues of global interest. Eben’s PhD (focused on agricultural and international development) is designed to improve his knowledge of existing theories and concepts regarding the individuals/firms/entities, places, and institutions within the food and agricultural system of the world. His potential dissertation research would examine issues fueling debates on agricultural input subsidy programs in Sub-Saharan Africa with a comparative study of input subsidy programs in cash and staple crop production systems.