Todd Cleveland is a professor of African history at the University of Arkansas. He has also taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Minnesota, James Madison University, the University of Ghana, and Augustana College (Illinois). He has written seven books (including two that were subsequently translated and published in Portuguese), all of which revolve around various aspects of Africa's past, and present, and has also published scholarly articles on pedagogical strategies and approaches related to teaching African history. At the University of Arkansas, Todd received the Master Teacher award and was inducted into the institution's Teaching Academy, the two most significant teaching honors that the university bestows.

Michael G. Panzer is an adjunct professor of history at Marist College and a full-time high school teacher at Roy C. Ketcham High School. He has been teaching for 26 years. He has also worked part-time at Mount Saint Mary College (History Department) and at the University at Albany – SUNY (Africana Studies Department). His research focuses on Mozambican history, nationalism, refugee history, and state-formation during the 1960s in southern Africa. His previous work has appeared in the Journal of Southern African Studies (2009), Social Dynamics (2013), and the Portuguese Journal of Social Science (2015).