Academia
African Voices Archive
Professor Verkijika G. Fanso
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Prof. Enocent Msindo
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Godfrey B. Tangwa was born in Nso, North West Region of Cameroon, and remains deeply tied to this identity and the matters that affect Nsoland, despite his global career. He had his academic formation at the Universities of Nigeria in Nsukka, Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo) in Ile-Ife, and Ibadan in Ibadan. He lectured at the University of Ife from 1978-1986 and moved to the University of Yaounde in 1987. With doctoral specialization in epistemology and metaphysics and focal interest in Bioethics and African philosophy, he has taught courses in practically all branches of philosophy and risen steadily through the academic ranks from Assistant Lecturer (1979), Lecturer (1982), Senior Lecturer (1987), Associate Professor (1999) and Professor (2005). He is a member of numerous professional associations in many of which he has played a considerable leadership role. He is a member of the International Association of Bioethics (IAB), served on its Board of Directors from 1997-2003 and was its Vice-President from 1999-2001. He is a Fellow of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences (CAS); the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) on whose Biospecimen and Data Governance Committee he serves as a member; Vice-Chairperson of the Cameroon Bioethics Initiative (CAMBIN) which he founded in 2005; an executive committee member of the Pan-African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN); Advisory Board Member and Chairpersonofthe Cultural, Anthropological, Social and Economic (CASE) work group of the Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium (GET). Professor Tangwa has over 100 publications to his credit, including 10 books, 25 book chapters and over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles. He is recognized globally as an expert in Bioethics and African philosophy and has contributed significantly in the domain of bioethics especially to research ethics, research regulation and governance, international guidelines, ethics committee work and capacity-building in science and research on the African continent. He is currently a Senior Fellow in Governance & Ethics at the Nkafu Policy Institute, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon, where he was Head of the Department of Philosophy from 2004-2009.
Affiliation(s): University of Yaoundé I Nkafu Policy Institute Cameroon Bioethics Initiative
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Published Work: In Defence of Theft?: On the Theft and Restitution of Ngonnso’ and Punitive Exhibitions (In Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums)
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Verkijika G. Fanso is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Yaounde I. He has published widely on African political history and Cameroon history and culture. He has played a key role in promoting the culture of Cameroon and supporting the Cameroon archives at Buea, and is President of the Association of Friends of Archives and Antiquities in Cameroon.
Affiliation(s): University of Yaoundé I
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Professor Bongasu Tanla Kishani ( 21 June 1944 - 23 February 2024) was a prominent Cameroonian philosopher, poet, academic and activist known for his profound explorations of cultural identity and the intersection of African oral traditions with Western philosophy. In 1974, as a student in Germany, he discovered Ngonnso's [Queen Mother of the Nso people] whereabouts. During this encounter, he photographed Ngonnso in the Ethnological Museum in Dahlem. This photograph became important at a later stage for the design of replications of Ngonnso. In 1976, upon his return to Cameroon, he initiated campaigns to restitute Ngonnso. His activism continued throughout his career as a lecturer and then Professor of Philosophy at the University of Yaounde I.
Affiliation(s): University of Yaounde
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Published Work: Les philosophies d'expression orale chez les Nso' du Cameroun : (essai sur la pluralite culturelle)
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Prof Enocent Msindo is an Associate Professor and currently the Dean of Humanities, Rhodes University. He completed his MPhil and PhD in History at the University of Cambridge, and was subsequently awarded a Mellon Postdoctoral Scholarship in Rhodes University's History Department in 2005/6. He was then appointed as a lecturer on the Next Generation Academic Programme from 2007 to 2009, also funded by Mellon He is a National Research Foundation (NRF, RSA) rated researcher. He has wide-ranging research interests in African social and political history. Over the years, he has researched and published on social and political identities such as ethnicity, nationalism, and chieftaincy, and also on marginalization in precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial Zimbabwe. He completed a major work on ethnicity and its intersection with other identities in Southern Zimbabwe which he published in his well-received monograph entitled Ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Transformations in Kalanga and Ndebele Societies, 1860-1990. As a post-doctoral fellow at Rhodes University, he was part of the community of Zimbabwean scholars in South Africa who debated the contents of the Ian Smith Papers that were housed at Rhodes University. At the time, the Papers were only accessible through special permission. This inter-Africa diapsoric community joined the Zimbabwean archival community in calling for an investigation into the nature of the collection's content. In 2010, Msindo was commissioned by the President Robert Mugabe to produce a report. Msindo's investigation found that more than 90% of the documents contained in the collection were governmental in nature. His investigation into what are now termed The Rhodesia Cabinet Files lay the foundation for Zimbabwe to demand the repatriation of the collection.
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Heba Abd el Gawad is an Indigenous Egyptian heritage and museum activist and researcher. She is Senior Curator of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, facilitating Indigenous community research, care, and access to cultural belongings from North Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. She has co-developed, with UCL’s Prof. Alice Stevenson, the AHRC funded project: ‘Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Views from Egypt’, aiming at amplifying the voice, visibility and validity of modern Egyptian communities in UK museums. She focuses on developing meaningful and equitable community partnerships as a means of building relevant, relatable, and responsive social and economic futures for colonially extracted and exploited cultural belongings in UK museums. Abd el Gawas is committed to community-led participatory museum and research practices centred around and respectful of Indigenous ways of seeing, being and doing. She was selected as one of the most influential 21 Egyptian women in 2021 for her community work in the heritage sector.
Affiliation(s): Hornimam Museum and Gardens University College London Disrupting & Reorienting Restitution
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Published Work: Egypt’s dispersed heritage: Multi-directional storytelling through comic art ; Strategic Narcissism: A Lived Experience of ‘Decolonising’, Inclusion of and ‘Collaborations’ with Indigenous Researchers
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Ahmed Farouk Ghoneim is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University. He is a research fellow at the Economic Research Forum for Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey (ERF) as well as at Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) in Poland. He works as a consultant to several international and national organizations including the World Bank, WTO, UNCTAD, UNDP, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and his special interests in research include mainly trade policy, trade in services, regional trade integration, the multilateral trading system, the World Trade Organization, the economics of Intellectual Property Rights, institutional economics, law and economics, and political economy in which he has published widely. Following a global career in trade policy, he returned to Egypt, as a Professor of Economics and Cairo University and In August, 2020 he was appointed as the Head of the Economic Authority of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC). He serves as a board member for a number of institutions including NMEC, Grand Egyptian Museum, Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Fund for Tourism and Antiquities. He also served as an advisor to the Minister of Planning and Economic Development on trade policy issues. In October 2024, he was appointed as the CEO of the Grand Egyptian Museum.
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Dr. Monica Hanna, a prominent figure in the global Archaeology community, began her academic journey by studying Egyptology and Archaeological Chemistry at the American University of Cairo (AUC) in 2004. She furthered her education with an MA at AUC and a doctorate in archaeology at the University of Pisa, Italy. Her research, which delves into the spatial, cognitive, and identity aspects of archaeological sites, mainly focused on heritage’s diverse interpretations and influences on spatial and communal identities. Monica’s academic prowess was further honed as a post-doctoral fellow in the Topoi Cluster of Excellence in the Department of Egyptology and North African Studies at Humboldt University from July 2011 to November 2012. After 2011, Hanna has been working with the media and a group of volunteers to bring awareness to the plight of different archaeological sites in Egypt. She courageously spoke and defended the heritage of Egypt and its protection. Hanna has been granted numerous awards, including the SAFE Beacon Award for 2014, for her efforts in salvaging antiquities under conflict. She was also named by UNESCO the Monuments Woman of 2014. She has also received ‘Distinguished AUC Alumna’ twice, once in Cairo in 2014 and the other in New York in 2015. She founded the College of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage in Aswan with several departments and a substantial cohort of students and professors. In 2020, Dr. Monica Hanna’s influence in Egypt was further solidified when she was selected as one of the 50 most influential women in the country under the auspices of the Egyptian Prime Minister. Her impact is also evident in her collaboration with the University of Oxford, where she was awarded a research grant as part of Action for Restitution in Africa. Her current research focuses on decolonizing archaeology, repatriation, and restitution amongst methods for accessibility to archaeology and heritage for the wider public, with a particular interest in digital humanities. In 2022, she and her research team launched the first public movement to repatriate the Rosetta Stone and the Bust of Nefertiti.
Affiliation(s): Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport
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Published Work: Repatriating Cultural Identity: The Egyptian Discontinuity Pretext; The Future of Egyptology
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Salama Moussa (4 February 1887 – 4 August 1958) was an Egyptian journalist, writer and political theorist who is lauded for having written/translated over 40 published books. While attending secondary school in Cairo, Moussa was exposed to writers such as Farah Antun, Jurji Zaydan, and Ahmad Lutfi Al-Sayyid that discussed modern and, at the time, radical ideas such as Social Darwinism, women's rights, and nationalism. He is credited for later popularising the idea of socialism in Egypt and for advocating for an egalitarian socialism where women's sovereignty was upheld. He was also an Egyptian Nationalist who championed unity amongst Egyptians, and called for the political and economic independence of Egypt from British occupation. In the 1920s, at the height of a cultural and literary renaissance in Egypt, he established the Egyptian Academy for Scientific Education. During this time he also participated in public debates around restitution, through his contributions to Al Ahram, where he called for the return of Egyptian cultural belongings as a matter of resistance to colonialism and reclamaition of identity. Following the closure of the academy by the government in the 1930s, he founded the magazine, Al Majalla Al Jadida,which was in circulation until the mid 1940s. In the 1950s he served as the supervisor of the science section in Akhbar el-Yom, a role he served in until his death in 1958.
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Taha Hussein (15 November 1889 – 28 October 1973) was a seminal Egyptian intellectual, writer, and educational reformer known as the "Dean of Arabic Literature". Despite losing his sight at age two, he became the first PhD graduate of Cairo University, and later became the first rector of the University of Alexandria. He was a leader of the Nahda (Arab Renaissance), advocating for modern education, secularism, and critical thought, and a proponent of Egyptian Nationalism. As Minister of Education (1950–1952), he famously championed free, universal education. In the 1920s and 1930s, Hussein made contributions to Al Ahram, where he drew attention to the exploitation and misrepresentation of Egyptian heritage by colonial powers, and called for the restitution of Egyptian belongings as anchors of national identity.
Affiliation(s): Cairo University University of Alexandria
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