Our Lead Team

Dr. Mohamed Mwamandi.Treasurer

Dr. Mohamed Mwamzandi is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the African languages program coordinator in the African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Department. He is the SEALLF Communication Officer. Dr. Mwamzandi is a specialist in linguistics who teaches African linguistics and literature, Islamic societies and cultures, and the Swahili language at the UNC-Chapel Hill. His main research interests are pragmatics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, literature, and violent religious extremism.

Dr. Esther Lisanza. Fmr. President

Dr. Lisanza is an Assistant Professor at Howard University in the Department of African Studies. She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign(UIUC), an MA in African studies from UIUC, and an MA in Swahili Linguistics and Literature from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Her research focuses on language politics in Africa, African education, indigenous knowledge, and women's empowerment. Her latest monograph is The Multivoices of Kenyan Children Learning to Write(2020), and her latest book is Gender and Education in Kenya(2021)

Dr. Maganda is an instructor at the University of Georgia. She holds a Ph.D. in language and literacy from the University of South Carolina. Dr. Maganda is currently the Director of the African Languages, Literature, and Cultures program in the Comparative Literature and Intercultural Studies Department at the University of Georgia. Her research interests lie in language, literacy, and comparative education with particular emphasis on language ideology, Linguistic promotion, and literacy resource creation. Her recent publications include African’s Identity Revolution in the 21st Century(2022); Why Do you Ask Me Kwa Nini waniuliza Mimi(2021), and The Beauty of Diversity; Seeing the Value of Identity through a Journey in Serengetti (2021).

Dainess Maganda,PhD, President

Communication Officer

Oluwafunke Brinda Ogunya is the Yoruba Language and Culture Lecturer at the Department of World Languages and Culture, Howard University, and the Director of Fulbright-Hays Intensive Advanced Yoruba Group Project Abroad. She is a doctoral candidate specializing in African American Literature and Cultural Studies in the Department of English at Florida State University. Her research interests include Yoruba Language Pedagogy, Black women’s fiction, African/Africana folklore, and Motherhood. She received her M.A. in African Literature from the University of Ibadan and a B. A. in English Studies from Adekunle Ajasin University, Nigeria. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, as a Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, where she taught the Yoruba Language in the 2015/2016 academic year.