Who runs the Kamusi Project?

The Kamusi Project Internet Living Swahili Dictionary is jointly run by Kamusi Project International and Kamusi Project USA, non-profit organizations respectively incorporated in Switzerland and Delaware. From 2007 to 2009, the project was housed at the World Language Documentation Centre, with which it remains closely affiliated.

The project spent its first 12 years as a part of the Council on African Studies at Yale University. In 2007, the Kamusi Project was spun off from its academic incubator. The Kamusi Project is no longer affiliated with Yale University in any capacity.

The project was conceived by the editor, Martin Benjamin, when he was a graduate student in anthropology at Yale. He and Ann Biersteker together prepared the project as a formal proposal in 1994. In December 1994 the project received initial support from the Yale Language Consortium Committee, the local arm of the eleven-university (Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale) Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning. The full Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning then provided the Kamusi Project with a grant for graduate student staff from the summer of 1995 until 1997. In 1997 we received a three year grant from the United States Department of Education International Research and Studies program, and in 2003 we were awarded another two year grant. Staff have included: Basilio Mungania, Charles Mironko, Chege Githiora, Anne Geoghegan, Kabiri Ngeta, and Lauren Anderson. Dr. Joe Rodrigue was the project's lead computer programmer from 1998 through 2003, followed by Andrew Smith through 2006. Paa Kwesi Imbeah at kasahorow.org in Ghana now leads the project's computer programming, with support from Arthur Buliva in Kenya and Appfrica in Uganda. More details on the project staff can be found in the participants list.

Dr. Benjamin now runs the Kamusi Project full time, with the title of Executive Director of Kamusi Project International and CEO of Kamusi Project USA. He lives in Lausanne, Switzerland, with his wife and daughter.