UMass Boston

As part of the programming for its annual Africa Day, the John W. McCormack School of Policy and Global Studies and Africa Scholars Forum were proud to host Ambassador Hilda Suka-Mafudze, the Permanent Representative of the African Union to the United States. Her Excellency delivered a keynote address on “Covid Diplomacy and Africa: Clinical Trials, Travel Bans, and Vaccine Equity,” for which she received an honorarium that she generously donated back to the McCormack School to fund McCormack students’ opportunities for success.  

With these funds, the Africa Scholars Forum established the African Union Ambassador Hilda Suka-Mafudze Special Summer Enrichment Award to promote research and scholarship on U.S.–Africa relations by two McCormack graduate students. The award includes a $1,000 scholarship and short-term research project on the impacts of the African Union’s regional office in the U.S. this summer. Two students in the Global Governance and Human Security program whose research relates to the topics of U.S.–Africa relations were selected for the award: Lilian Sibanda, a master’s student, and PhD student Fridah Dermmillah Obare. While Obare will focus her research on how United States foreign policy works with the African Union, Sibanda will explore political affairs in South Africa in the 1990s and 2000s. Both students were honored and excited to win the award, as the topic of U.S.–Africa relations resonates with their studies in the Global Governance and Human Security program. 

For Lilian Sibanda, the short-term research project on this topic aligns with her own research interests in the intersections of international organizations and a powerful government. “It can’t get any better than this,” she said. Sibanda entered the Master’s in Global Governance and Human Security program as a UMass Boston alumna, having completed her BA in the online Global Affairs program while she was living in Peru. Although she was hesitant to come to the United States during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd, Sibanda was drawn to McCormack’s program because of its combination of both global governance and human security. “That was what I really wanted,” she said. “I want to understand how the decisions that are made by international organizations and powerful governments affect people.”  

Sibanda was nominated for the award by a friend in recognition of her research interests in rural development and community issues and her desire to be a representative voice for rural communities in international organizations. As Sibanda described, “I am interested in the interconnectedness of our world and believe that decisions made by countries or international organizations affect people in different parts of the world. Even people who live in remote villages see the impact of political processes made in Washington or Geneva by key players in international politics.”  

Sibanda’s research project this summer will involve tracing the narrative of several interviews that the John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation Padraig O’Malley conducted between 1989 and 2008 with key figures promoting peace in South Africa. Reviewing these digitized interviews, Sibanda will seek to understand the negotiation processes that began in 1990 between the South African government and the African National Congress.  

For PhD student Dermmillah Obare, the AU Ambassador Hilda Suka-Mafudze Summer Enrichment Award connects her commitment to studying African institutions with the objectives of the short-term research project funded as part of this award. She said, “I was so delighted because my interest of study has been within Africa. I think African institutions are not well-studied, and they are doing a lot in terms of dealing with so many challenges that we face. This award is so fitting within my interests of study and also within my passion in addressing African issues.”  

Obare’s project will focus on U.S. foreign policy with the African Union. She plans to hold discussions with two Ambassadors of the African Union, including Her Excellency Ambassador Hilda Suka-Mafudze, from whom Obare will seek a deeper understanding of foreign relationships between the U.S. and the African Union. Obare will also interview Ambassador Fatima Kyari Mohammed, the Permanent Observer of the African Union to the United Nations, to understand the larger international policy relationships in which the African Union takes part.  

The cooperation of governments is a primary research interest for Obare. Having just completed her first year of coursework, she is in the process of identifying her areas of research and, at this point, wants to study the interactions of states as they cooperate on environmental issues related to wildlife. Obare is a government official with the Kenya Wildlife Service. She first learned of the PhD program in Global Governance and Human Security after facilitating a workshop hosted by the Center for Governance and Sustainability on how countries can enhance their reporting in natural environmental agreements.  

Given her education in ecological issues of wildlife, she said, “I knew what is needed for animals from a scientific point of view, but I was missing the key element of the human factor. I saw increasingly that human factors are becoming important in terms of conservation because our habitats are increasingly being threatened due to human activity.” Using her doctoral studies to supplement her ecological background, Obare hopes to develop a social and international relations perspective that will allow her to address the larger questions that fuel her research: “How do states cooperate, and what measures can we put forth in the future to enhance that cooperation?”  

Lilian Sibanda and Dermmillah Obare will complete their short-term research projects focusing on U.S–Africa relations as part of their AU Ambassador Hilda Suka-Mafudze Special Summer Enrichment Award this summer. Each project offers a unique perspective on international relations with a specific investment in African studies to complement their current studies in the Global Governance and Human Security program, contributing to research and scholarship on the impacts of the African Union’s regional office in the United States.