Chap Kusimba is working to understand the development of technology and trade on the Eastern African coast. For the past ten years, Chap has been excavating a site on the eastern coast of Kenya in the town of Mtwapa. He has uncovered five layers of artifacts suggesting successive occupation in Mtwapa from the first millennium A.D. to 1750. His findings provide compelling evidence of a precolonial urban African society that traded widely with East Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia during the Middle Ages.

Chap Kusimba was born in Uganda and studied at Kenyatta University, Kenya and Bryn Mawr College.