A Nairobi-based staff member with the United Nations Environment Program and an employee of Aviation Industry Corporation of China were two of the Chinese citizens killed, according to a list of victims provided by the country’s embassy in Kenya, The Global Times reported.

[The crash has highlighted the United Nations’ work in some of the world’s most troubled regions.]

Pius Adesanmi, a professor with the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, was among the victims from Canada, the university confirmed. Professor Adesanmi, who was also associated with the university’s English department, was a prominent public intellectual in his native Nigeria, where he regularly published political essays.

In 2010 he was awarded the Penguin Prize for African writing in the nonfiction category for a manuscript that was published the following year in the book “You’re Not a Country, Africa.”

“Pius was a towering figure in African and post-colonial scholarship and his sudden loss is a tragedy,” Benoit-Antoine Bacon, president and vice chancellor of the university, said in a statement.

Professor Adesanmi, who held both Canadian and Nigerian citizenship, was injured last year in a serious car crash in Nigeria. Before Sunday’s flight, he posted on Facebook a photo of himself holding his Canadian passport, along with the text of Psalm 139:9-10.

“If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,” the post read, “even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”

Cedric Asiavugwa, a third-year Georgetown Law student who was traveling home to Nairobi, was confirmed dead by Georgetown University officials. Mr. Asiavugwa worked with refugees and started a community-based organization to protect women and children fleeing conflicts in Somalia, according to a message officials sent out Sunday.