Abdi Ismail Samatar will present a lecture on “Piracy of the Rich and Poor along the East Africa Coast” at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Gallery of the Memorial Union.

As a Africanist scholar, Samatar is also a member of the African Academy of Sciences and an ISU alumnus.

As the current chairman of the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota, Samatar’s focus is finding the relation between democracy and development in developing nations and throughout Africa. 

Samatar received a master’s degree in community and regional planning from Iowa State before completing a doctorate degree at the University of California, Berkeley.