about fuambai
Dr. Fuambai Sia Ahmadu is founder of SiA Inc. a movement dedicated to empowering circumcised women and girls in Africa and worldwide.
As a medical and symbolic anthropologist, Dr. Ahmadu worked for several years as a lead consultant for UNICEF in The Gambia and a principal investigator at the UK's Medical Research Council Laboratories also in The Gambia. In the U.S., Dr. Ahmadu worked at the Child Development Branch and the Office of Global Health Research and International Activities at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at NIH. She was a Carley-Hunt Fellow funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation and served as a health advisor at the Office of the Vice President in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Dr. Ahmadu completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) and was awarded a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) post-doctoral training fellowship at the Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago.
As an independent scholar, Dr. Ahmadu’s theoretical interests include female (and male) initiation as symbolic systems, as well as understanding gender constructs and sexuality in circumcision practices. In her experience and expertise as both an insider and an outsider, Dr. Ahmadu has conducted research, written articles and lectured extensively on African female initiation rituals. She is a leading figure in critical debates on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and intersections with global health policies, human rights and western feminism. Dr. Ahmadu is a co-signatory to the Public Policy Advisory Network on African Female Genital Surgeries (PPAN) published in The Hastings Center Report November/December 2012 issue.