Academia
African Voices Archive
Dr. Kennedy Gitu
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Albert Gouaffo is a literary and cultural scholar at the University of Dschang in western Cameroon and researches the culture of remembrance, post-colonialism and German-African literature. He completed his doctorate in 1997 at Saarland University on the experience of being an outsider, as examined in francophone African literature in the German-language and cultural context. He was also a Georg Forster Fellow at Saarland University from 2004 to 2006, where he subsequently completed his Habilitation. With a wide range of publications in German, French and English, he promotes intercultural German studies and the examination of the German colonial period in Cameroon. As the founder of a German studies journal and Vice President of the association "German Studies in Sub-Saharan Africa", he is also committed to networking German studies on the continent. In 2025, he was awarded the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize.
Affiliation(s): University of Dschang
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Published Work: Similarities and differences: An interim assessment of the debate on the looting and restitution of Cameroonian cultural property in Germany; Décentrer la question des restitutions : l’exemple des biens culturels issus de contextes coloniaux en Afrique face aux micro-histoires régionales; Whose Voices? On Power, Terminology and the Definition of Community : A Postscript
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Prof. Forget Chaterera-Zambuko is an Assistant Professor at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi with over 15 years of experience in teaching, research, and academic leadership in archival science, records management, and museum studies. Her research explores digital curation, sustainable digital records management, blockchain and AI in records management systems, and the politics of displaced and migrated archives. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Comma, the journal of the International Council on Archives (ICA), and a member of the ICA’s Advocacy Expert Group. Her work has received multiple international recognitions, including the 2020 Digital Preservation Award by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network for Teaching and Communications, the 2020 United States National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Award (Category: Educators), and a Y2 researcher rating from South Africa’s National Research Foundation. Her leadership extends to serving as Programme Chair for the 2024 Archival Education and Research Institute and contributing to SUAD’s initiative on Electronic Document and Records System. Dr Chaterera-Zambuko has an interdisciplinary lens to heritage and information governance and is committed to fostering inclusive, technologically resilient archival futures
Affiliation(s): Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi
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Published Work: Real and Imagined Archives: The Emotional Impact of Zimbabwe’s Displaced Rhodesian Army Archives; Lost Unities: An Exhibition for Archival Repatriation ; Lost Unities
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Professor Kimani Njogu is a linguist, literary critic and cultural scholar. He is the Director of Twaweza Communications and Executive Director of Africa Health and Development International (AHADI). Until 2003, he was an Associate Professor of Kiswahili and African Languages at Kenyatta University. Between 1998 – 2007, he was Council Member of the International African Institute, University of London. In 2004, Kimani was appointed a Member of the three-person Task Force for the East African Kiswahili Council in the East African Community, drafting the Kiswahili protocol for the Council of Ministers. He is a recipient of the 2000 pan-African Noma Award for Publishing in Africa for a Kiswahili book. For over a decade, he has served as Chairman of CHAKITA-Kenya (The National Kiswahili Committee) and Chair of the Board at the Legal Resources Foundation and CODE-IP Trust. He is also a member of the Kiswahili Cross Border Commission at the Academy of African Languages and a member of the Working Group on Safety and Security of Journalists in Kenya. His Kiswahili book on the teaching of literature won the 2000 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Prof. Kimani Njogu was recently awarded the Order of the Golden Warrior by H.E. Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Kenya, for his work in media, culture and the arts. He holds a PhD from Yale University (1993)
Affiliation(s): Twaweza Communications
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Published Work: Getting Heard: [Re]claiming Performance Space in Kenya; Reclaiming our Heritage
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Dr Njabulo Chipangura is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology with an interest in the empirical ways in which museum practices can be decolonised through epistemic and aesthetic disobedience, benchmarked by undoing earlier ways of knowledge production, particularly by examining African collections and their representations. Njabulo has published several research papers that examine ongoing debates about the coloniality of museums and associated knowledge production and representation practices, with the aim of imagining a decolonised museum in Africa. He is also a managing editor for the Museum and Society, published by the University of Leicester Open Journals. Njabu is currently working on a co-edited volume entitled The Museologies of Africa: Rethinking African Museums, Community Inclusion, Living Cultures and Decolonisation which will be published by Routledge in 2026.
Affiliation(s): National University of Ireland
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Published Work: Provenance Research in Museums: Principles, Practices and Possibilities, Volume 1; Truth-telling as a form of decolonial care: stories from a collaborative object biography research with the Ndau community of Eastern Zimbabwe; Community Collaborations and Social Biographies of Museum Collections from Colonial Contexts: Meanings of Zulu Beadwork; Where are Nehanda's remains?: A Zimbabwean Search in the Context of Shifting Museum Politics (In Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums); “Bring the Objects out of the Basement!”: The Wellcome African Collection at Manchester Museum
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Lennon Mhishi is an anthropologist whose interdisciplinary work spans interests in Africa and its diasporas; museums; material culture and art practices; the afterlives of slavery and colonialism; and approaches to contemporary forms of exploitation, forced labour and human rights in different African countries. He has experience in migration and diaspora, heritage, music, and other arts-based, creative approaches to knowledge-making and engagement. Before joining UBC, Lennon worked at the University of Oxford, based at the Pitt Rivers Museum. He was part of the project, “Reconnecting Objects”, funded by the VW Stiftung. He collaborated with partners in Oxford (UK), Cape Town (South Africa), Dakar (Senegal), Dschang (Cameroon) and Berlin (Germany). The project, among other things, explored colonial collections—as well as art practices—and the possibilities of mobilising African and diasporic communities in rethinking these collections.
Affiliation(s): University of British Columbia
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Published Work: Where are Nehanda's remains?: A Zimbabwean Search in the Context of Shifting Museum Politics (In Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums); Chimurenga epistemologies: diasporic entanglements, colonial afterlives and the struggle of thinking other worlds
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Emmanuel Yacobo is a social scientist with strong academic background in education, public policy analysis, cultural heritage management and research on ethnic conflict analysis and peace building. He currently serves as the Director and Principal Curator of National Museum of Tanzania. He has been the main contact person for the repatriation of belongings and human ancestors to Tanzania.
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Kennedy Gitu is a population historian with an anthropological and archaeological background, with an interest is in pastoral demography, mobility and settlement, and climate change adaptation. He is the Country Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), and Historian in the Department of History, Archaeology and Political Studies at Kenyatta University. As the Country Director of BIEA he has prioritised pivoting the work of the Institute to serve African interests, which has included repatriating belongings and human ancestors in colonial-era collection to countries and communities of origin.
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Emmanuel Ndiema is a prominent archaeologist and senior researcher at the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), currently serving as the Head of Earth Sciences. He is actively involved in the documentation and management of Kenya's cultural and natural heritage, with a strong focus on community engagement and the repatriation of cultural artifacts. He is currently part of the working group that is developing a framework for restitution in Kenya.
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’Mamokuena Makhema is a director of Morija Museum and Archives. Her passion for decoloniality permeates the approaches and programming that have emerged at the Morija Museum under her leadership. She has numerous outputs on television and in films as a content creator; writer, director and producer. In recent years she has added expertise in the development of human rights advocacy content for Southern African audiences to her repertoire of skills. Makhema holds two master’s degrees; one in Film and Television Studies from Wits School of Arts at the University of Witwatersrand, and another in Gender Studies and International Law from SOAS, University of London. She previously worked as a Lecturer at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Film and Television programme. Makhema continues to actively mentor and teach artists and cultural practitioners in various disciplines.
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