‘All-In’ on AFRICA

Across departments, numerous BSOS faculty members—and some students—are working on the African continent in 2023 to gain a global perspective and seek solutions to challenges that not only impact that continent, but the rest of the world as well. Described here are just a few of the projects and trips that have been planned this year.

Ghana Ghana

Associate Professor John McCauley in the Department of Government and Politics was granted $4 2 million to lead the Center for International Development and Conflict Management’s efforts to help the many ethnic, religious and other groups living in northern Ghana find common ground Their common cause: Keeping terrorist groups out of the area McCauley traveled to northern Ghana in late January to hold a kick-off meeting with the project’s local partners, and plans to return every two to three months throughout the year, and for longer stretches in the summer when he’s not teaching

Assistant Clinical Professor Eliza Thompson of the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences will be traveling to Ghana for a few weeks spanning July and August with 15 students These undergraduate and graduate students will gain hands-on experience working with individuals with autism, cerebral palsy, and other special needs at six partner organizations that include schools, nonprofits and clinics Through the department’s first education abroad opportunity, master’s students will be able to obtain clinical hours, while undergraduate students will earn observation hours Students will also participate in cultural activities—including visiting museums, art galleries, and the country’s slave dungeons and forts—to enhance their cultural sensitivity and understanding of the complex issues that surround the impact of colonization on education and healthcare systems

Senegal

Assistant Professor Catherine Nakalembe of the Department of Geographical Sciences (GEOG) will travel to Senegal in June to conduct on-the-ground training and begin collecting data for an “Earth Observation-enabled regional and national agricultural monitoring in West Africa” project with the NASA SERVIR West Africa Hub The new project will use takeaways from an earlier, related SERVIR project—that one focused on Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania—to strengthen existing early warning systems in Senegal, Mali and possibly Burkina Faso, and to also launch a system to help better monitor crop conditions, yield forecasts and cropland/crop-type maps

Cameroon

Associate Professor Meredith Gore (GEOG) traveled to Cameroon in mid-April for a launch meeting for “Operation Pangolin”—a $4 million project supported by the Paul G Allen Family Foundation that seeks to use new interdisciplinary science to help conserve its namesake, the world’s most trafficked wild mammal The team will gather data on Central Africa’s conservation strategies Gore and her collaborators will develop toolkits for pangolin monitoring and data collection, and work with indigenous peoples, local communities and government agencies to deploy monitoring programs, implement conservation interventions and develop predictive tools for addressing wildlife crime

Rwanda

Nakalembe co-organized the International Conference on Learning Representations’ first Machine Learning for Remote Sensing Workshop with NASA Harvest team members in May The workshop featured presentations on the latest relevant research papers, as well as speakers that included Abigail Annkah, a Research Software Engineer at Google AI; Francis Ngabo, CEO of Rwanda Space Agency; and Charles Mwangi, Earth Observation, Research, Education and Outreach Lead at the Kenya Space Agency

In late June, Research Professor Molly Brown (GEOG) will travel to Kenya with School of Public Policy Research Professor David Backer, and with Kathryn Grace and Jude Mikal, both University of Minnesota faculty, for a new project supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, in collaboration with specialists at Action Against Hunger The project’s aim is to increase the usability of the modelbased forecasts of child acute malnutrition they created—through the “Modelling Early Risk Indicators to Anticipate Malnutrition” project funded by the U K ’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—for countries susceptible to climate, conflict, and other serious shocks Improving the design of the models and the application of the forecasts in practice will rely heavily on feedback from potential end users: “What we want to do, in a perfect world, is to change the questions that are asked to get the data we need to do a better prediction of need,” said Brown

Professor and Chair Sangeetha Madhavan of the Department of African American Studies is continuing work on the five-year, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-funded “JAMO project” that is focused on collecting data on marriage, kinship and children’s well-being in two informal settlements The research team, which features collaborators at UMD and in Kenya, travels to Nairobi this summer to hold a mid-project workshop to take stock of what has been accomplished so far, and to develop the next round of proposals for submission to NIH The team will also continue publishing papers and making the data accessible to graduate students at UMD and elsewhere

Assistant Professor Matthew Thomann of the Department of Anthropology spent most of 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya documenting the typical human papillomavirus (HPV) patient trajectories, and associated pain, experienced by Kenyan men who have sex with men (MSM) Building on that work, Thomann plans to return to Nairobi this summer to—with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research—better understand the role homophobia plays in the late presentation of HPV and other anal diseases among Nairobi MSM His interdisciplinary research team will also work to establish an advanced HPV screening process that involves testing cells from anal Pap smears to determine which of the 150 HPV genotypes cause anal warts but no cancer, and vice versa

South Africa South Africa South Africa

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Principal Lecturer Wendy Stickle and MLAW Senior Lecturer Christine White will lead undergraduate students on a July trip to Cape Town, South Africa so that students— especially those interested in criminal justice, comparative justice, social justice, human rights, history, public policy, child exploitation, and victim advocacy—can gain a better understanding of “the types of human trafficking occurring in South Africa and the consequences of and reactions to it ” Students will receive three credits for completing one of two courses related to the trip

Associate Professor Jessica Magidson of the Department of Psychology—also Director of the Center for Substance Use, Addiction and Health Research—traveled to Cape Town, South Africa in March with two psychology Ph D students, a postdoctoral fellow, and several staff and collaborators The team supported four National Institutes of Health-funded projects, including “Project Khanya,” which integrates substance use disorder (SUD) and HIV services in Cape Town primary care clinics Other projects the team worked on focused on reducing stigma among community health workers around SUD and mental health in HIV and tuberculosis care; on integrating a peer recovery coach model into community-based HIV services; and on how HIV disclosure can keep men engaged in HIV care Magidson and her team will continue to travel regularly to support these projects

Gore will bookend her 2023 summer with trips to South Africa and Mozambique to help reduce the serious health and national security threats that can result from the intersection of illegal wildlife trade, biosecurity and human health At the center of the five-year, $5 million project supported by the U S Department of Defense are vultures Vultures have body parts used for traditional medicine However, vultures can feed on poached wildlife carcasses that are infected with anthrax, and therefore pose new risks to biosecurity

Zambia

Nakalembe traveled to Zambia in early 2023 for a stakeholder meeting to discuss updates to the East and Southern Africa “Digital Regional Food Balance Sheet” that NASA Harvest created to show a complete picture of food availability in Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia These insights contribute to a more predictable trade and policy environment in the region NASA Harvest created the sheet with members of the largest regional economic organization in Africa, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, as well as AGRA, an alliance led by Africans, for African farming communities so that they can create solutions that meet their specific environmental and agricultural needs