This week the world lost Herman Chinery-Hesse, oft called “the Bill Gates of Africa”.
But the Ghanaian tech entrepreneur was much more than that. I was introduced to him by his niece, my friend and BloggingGhana cofounder Sandra Chinery-Hesse and he seemed to accept me as part of the family from day 1.
He was controversial and always walked his own path. He was an organised humanist in one of the world’s most religious countries. He was innovative and always found a way. He followed his body clock for working hours (and cleverly avoided the Accra traffic) and was never seen before noon. He would often accept visitors lying down on a bench resting, not getting up, but rather throwing jokes at you from his horizontal position. At the tender age of 30, he told me some hard truths about midlife that I could only appreciate recently.
In addition to being unapologetically himself, he possessed – in my view -the most prized quality of them all – JOIE DE VIVRE. Alongside being one of Ghana’s more successful entrepreneurs, he loved to laugh, joke, make merry and party. My friend Ruth Wade Kwakwa wrote in her remembrance post that he was living LARGE, which I found just right.
Just last week we had an interaction online about there being a space in Google’s headquarters named after him, but no space, building or room in Ghana (I expect that is about to change). He included three (!) smiling emojis!
Without Herman the world is a bit more boring, square and gray. That is if we do not fill the void by taking it all both more seriously and more lightly.
Our lives these days are extensively lived online, this is where we work, socialize, learn about the world, “or bake a cake” as Internetstiftelsen (The Swedish Internet Foundation) said in the opening of their yearly, much-awaited, report launch of “The Swedes and the Internet 2023”. I wasn’t alone, 6000 others attended the launch this morning, but if you were not one of them, here are some of my fresh takeaways:
Almost all Swedes are online every day (91%) and use digital identification (93%) (which is basically monopolized, not very safe!)
Swedes are very positive toward police access to private conversations, and cameras with face recognition in public spaces (possibly due to increased violence) but against employers checking social media. There seems to be a “not in my backyard”-Internet thing going on here…
Different generations use different social media platforms. Favorites in the older generations are YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram (a big share of youth do not use Facebook and Instagram at all) while Snapchat, Tiktok and Roblox are important platforms for “born in the 2000s”. Based on this, are you “old” or “young”?
3/10 Swedes have used an AI tool like Chat GPT, DallE, Midjourney, Grammarly. If you break it down by age, there is a definite gap as 6/10 in the age group 18-34 years have used an AI tool.
Podcast listening in Sweden is still on the increase and public service has transitioned well there!
I am one of the 100 most followed scientists in Sweden on Twitter and LinkedIn in 2022, just below public scholars Agnes Wold and Robert Egnell. I came in on a sweet 23 spot!
There is an ongoing debate within the research community if social media presence is important as a way of disseminating knowledge. If so, it should be included in our job description. The other side sees social media engagement as unimportant “fluff”. Perhaps it is only for researchers who have nothing better to do. There is also the aspect what having a “personal brand” does with us as researchers. Not to speak of our place in the world as observers. Are we just helping publishers and employers make more money in a world where fixed employment has become elusive and rare? Is an argument for instance discussed here by Johanna Arnesson (Swe).
Of course, I feel it is very important to have a presence online, as it is a way to reach out with research findings, but also provide perspectives from my corner on current events or debates. However increasingly I feel conflicted that we publicly funded scholars engage on platforms owned by for-profit entities, far from the public, democratic agoras we were hoping for when I started my engagement online with first this blog, an account on Facebook and then organization for bloggers some 15 years ago.
Here I’d like to be a bit critical of my researcher colleagues. This hot debate makes some academics comfortably hide and not use the available tools to communicate with the world outside academia. Thus the fact that I am on this list with moderate effort means many of my researcher colleagues are not. Or if they are they are not maximizing their presence, for instance by sharing only in Swedish and thus followed mostly in Sweden which is a small market.
Whats next?
Next month, I am meeting with KTH colleagues to discuss best practises on social media.
After a three year period of slowing down my use of social media, I have started to again tweet (mostly live-tweet from interesting events in English) and blog. I am also increasing postings on LinkedIn especially on career related issues.
Slowly, slowly, and this is the first time I say so publicly, I am starting a communications agency with a focus on the academic sector. Reach out if you want my help!
I wrote an article for The Conversation, a place where academics can write based on their research for larger audiences, called “Understanding Ghana’s students is key to fixing the country”. The inspiration was the Fix The Country protests that have been ongoing for months in Ghana.
I opened with some background,
“A great many African countries had shown steady economic growth in the decade prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But all have failed to adequately create opportunities for the young people in their countries. With growing youth populations, creating paths for education and employment is a make or break issue for the continent.
In today’s knowledge economy, university students carry a key role in development. They are therefore an important group to study and understand better.”
My study on migration aspirations of university students in Ghana showed there were indeed interest in going abroad for at least on year, especially for studies. However a majority of respondents also wanted to return, and some (8%) also were not at all interested in living abroad. My main point in the article is that knowing the dreams and aspirations of young people is important in policy planning.
Similarly, a New African Magazine article series African Youth Speaks made room for African youth to speak their truth with the following motivation
“It is the responsibility of the older, more mature segment of a society to prepare the ground for the youth to thrive by providing quality education, training, mentoring, guidance, encouragement, sympathy and love and affection to the young, who have their own growing-up demons to deal with in addition to other forms of personal development. If this is lacking, the youth are cast adrift. “
“I had started my music studio in July 2019. As with any other business, the first 5-6 months were awful, and I could barely break even. Like many other Kenyan young entrepreneurs, I was looking for loans, but nobody really supports a start-up.
With the new restrictions, which included the need to ‘work from home’, things changed quite rapidly. As a music producer, I had to have the artist in the studio physically. With the curfew laws, I lost all my clients.”
When this happened, I was one of the people Wachira called as he is an old student of mine. We talked about possible solutions in the meantime and he started applying for jobs. In the special Issue, Wachira admirably writes:
“After a few months of applying for jobs and getting rejected, I went back to the drawing board and came up with a hybrid business plan that allows me to either work with artists on site or online. I am still working hard to sustain the business, but I can say one thing for sure: my dream did not die. It just got better, and I will keep looking for ways to survive in this new normal. “
Wachira’s personal conclusion is similar to the findings of my research, that African youth are not “opting out” by migrating. Rather they are craving opportunities and making deliberate plans to be able to contribute and build at home.
Together with Swedish think-tank Global Utmaning, I have written a chapter in an anthology on Swedish policy for a stronger EU in areas such as migration, climate, finance, new technologies such as artificial intelligence, youth, and many more. The ambition of the anthology is to also show how these policy areas overlap like human rights and migration, democracy and climate, development assistance, and trade.
Sweden joined the EU for economic reasons after the referendum in 1994. Since then the world has changed and EU has become a very political organization. The political climate has become more polarised and major issues are not resolved within the union. The very organization created to avoid war and conflict has not dealt very well with shocks. The Syria crisis with refugees and the ongoing migration from Africa have exposed the weaknesses of EU countries not being able to work together to provide shelter for the needy and fair process for those wishing to stay. The covid pandemic was another shock the EU did not handle well. BREXIT meant the EU for the first time has been challenged by real threats of falling apart. Taken together, the EU is shaking and can therefore not be a very strong voice in the world.
Migration, Integration and the EU
My Contribution
I wrote about migration and integration. The recommendations coming out of my chapter which tried to broaden the conversation to labor market needs and possible solutions used the Software Development-project at KTH that I work with as an example. My policy recommendations for Sweden in the EU were (translated here):
SWEDEN SHOULD:
• Act to change the view of immigrants and their integration into society, in line with The EU’s new integration action plan, ie to value the indispensable value of immigrants contribution to our society; • Prioritize a sustainable, harmonized, and long-term migration and integration policy – within the framework of a common European regulatory framework – based on principles inline with EU’s core values such as rule of law. This policy area should get more resources because it is both a social and economic investment for the future; • Question the Migration Commission’s focus on temporary residence permits for asylum seekers and return processes based on protection reasons that often do not change significantly over a period of a few years.
Online Launch
The seminar (in Swedish only) that launched the anthology “A strong EU, in Sweden’s interest” whas broadcast on YouTube and featured politicians as well as one of the editors of the anthology, Hans Alldén.
Some issues that were discussed were: What is a stronger EU? More united? Faster by taking majoritarian decisions instead of seeking consensus? More power and responsibility in the world? Better decisions taking the subsidiary principle into account? What can Sweden bring to the table?
Interesting issues raised by invited panellists were among others:
Jutte Guteland (S): Media do not cover European politics means weak transparency, despite much power with the EU.
Jakop Dalunde (Mp): Nobody keeps me accountable as a parliamentarian in the EU.
Hanne Waerland-Fager (Eu youth dialogue): We have to learn about what issues different political levels are in charge of, when we go to elections for the EU parliament we should discuss issues that EU is mandated to address.
Göran von Sydow (Director Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies): The pandemic is an interesting example where health is a national responsibility, but these measure affects EU at large, however collaborative measures were not happening.
Election season in Ghana is special to me. I have lived through the 2008, 2012, 2016 versions of it and gotten more and more involved in each election cycle. So for 2020, I decided to be a bit proactive! Together with a colleague at the Nordic Africa Institute with a soft spot for Ghanaian politics, Diana Højlund Madsen, we planned an event and a policy note around the gendered aspects of the 2020 Ghana Elections.
In the policy note, we write “In the upcoming Ghanaian elections, a woman has, for the first time, emerged as a vice-presidential candidate for one of the two major parties in the country. Her candidacy has sparked hopes of progress on gender equality, but has also triggered anti-feminist and misogynistic rhetoric.”
Thanks to all involved in making the event and the policy note possible.
Behind the scenes, Kajsa at Bokmässan Photo: @NordicAfrica
A dream came through a few weeks ago: I was a participant in Sweden’s foremost event for the written word, the Gothenburg Bookfair.
I remember the first time I attended the fair as a student. I took the train from Uppsala to Gothenburg and stayed with a classmate. On the morning of, I walked towards the exhibit area and the closer I got the more people joined me. Outside the Göteborgsmässan, colorful banners were up everywhere and the queue was long. Once inside, I was still shocked by the intensity, heat, and ferocity of book conversations, seminar events, the crowd streaming back and forth… and they were all holding (intellectual prints adorned) tote bags filled to the brim with new, exciting books. As a book nerd, I felt like I had died and come to heaven.
So when I colleague kind of casually asked if I would be alright with attending the book fair as part of my job, I might have screamed a YES too loud to be professional. I proposed a seminar, very hopefully assuming the corona crisis would be over around this time. “Africa after the Corona crisis: Digitalisation, Culture and Freedom”.
I suggested a long list of creatives I thought would to justice to the topic. In the end, this was the lineup:
Ainehi Edoro, Founder and editor-in-chief of Brittle Paper online literary magazine for African literature
Kajsa Hallberg Adu, Postdoctoral Researcher at NAI and co-founder of BloggingGhana
We spoke of effects of the Corona crisis on culture, but also on education and freedom – and how digitalization is playing a more important (and more divisive) role now than ever.
While I was hoping I would be at the fair physically, I could see myself being ushered through a dense crowd of sweaty and happy book lovers together with some extraordinary creatives to a well-lit stage and later join the crowd in browsing for books for 48 hours or so, as we all know, the Corona crisis is not over, and close-knit gatherings of sweaty thousands of people handing objects to each other are off the table for now. Thus this experience with Mantse and Ainehi calling in was second best, but still, quite the success if I may say so myself. However, a sweet side-effect is the webinar is available well beyond Gothenburg and Sweden.
As the summer moved into autumn in Sweden, days became shorter, rains fell, and our family was hit by a terrible blow. One in our midst was suddenly gone. She was called Comfort and it’s not often a person so embodies their name. She truly was a Comfort and a joy to her family and surrounding community including a large circle of friends and she will be missed.
Comfort Maame Ekua Adu
Comfort Maame Ekua Adu was my husband’s sister and became my sister too. When I was new in Ghana, I would meet her on the way to Community 1 Market where she would sit outside her friend’s shop and she would always wave me to stop and chat in a way that strengthened me and made me feel seen and often she made me laugh. In the family, she was a powerhouse and almost had an inner engine that seemed to propel her forward. She could kickstart us into different projects and at times step on toes as she hurried forward. Comfort was also the natural center of the party, coordinating the people involved, divvying up the food, and starting the dance on the dancefloor with a big, deep laugh.
Despite her natural speed, deep voice, and power, she moved with kindness. She took time to talk when we met, was tough when tough love was needed and hugged me with a squeeze so hard it almost made me breathless.
I seek comfort in that while our sister Comfort Maame Ekua’s life was too short, it was also inspirational, especially to women since she was unapologetically herself and in a way that encouraged others around her to live their desired life in a society that puts a lot of pressure on conforming to the norm. She had a large circle of friends, and over the last weeks, I have come to understand she knew almost everyone in our hometown of Tema! She lived alone and adopted and loved two girls.
As the autumn colored the leaves yellow and red, the skies turned grey, and the last sunrays of summer were seen less frequently each day here in Sweden. This past rainy weekend, Comfort was given her last rest in Ghana. Our sister Comfort spread joy and comfort and while I hate to write that in the past tense, I think that is the nicest thing one can say about a person. That is why so many will miss her sorely.
It is September and I am back on the blog. Over the summer, I decided to take an extended social media break after reading rhetoric expert Elaine Eksvärd’s post about being present with family (in Swedish). So I was just that: present. With the family I moved apartments, we went on a little trip, swam in Stockholm’s many water bodies and played many rounds of cards!
But now the air is crisp and some leaves are turning yellow, kids are in school and I am back behind the keyboard, working, and planning the autumn. Being a teacher at heart, this time of year smells of new beginnings, new possibilities, and “bouquets of sharpened pencils” as it was phrased in the film “You’ve Got Mail”. To top it off, my PostDoc at NAI is coming to an end in December so I am also planning for the next stage of my career. Probably more on that in another blog post soon!
Speaking of my workplace, we are now back in the office one day a week and that feels somehow perfect. The Covid-19 pandemic meant we were fully Working From Home and although that saved me a pretty long commute, I do miss having a workplace and colleagues. One day a week is perfect for fitting important meetings, water-cooler-small-talk — without feeling constantly on the hamster-wheel like commuting sometimes do.
For this fall, I am continuously working on the project The Space and Role of Political Science in the Evolving Democratic Transformation in Africa – right now on two papers: the first is about curriculum development in some selected African universities’ political science departments and the second on bibliometric data or research output in the social sciences in our case countries.
In addition to that, I have listed the papers I want to finish from other projects (read: the dissertation), the books I want to read (and maybe write a few book reviews?), the people I want to meet, even if by a 2m distance, the food I want to cook (this time of year is so food-fantastic!), and the blog and Instagram posts I want to share.
A few weeks ago, I did not think this feeling would come, but here it is: I am welcoming the autumn and all that comes with it!
Academia is not a place for fast turnarounds. Last week, I reached a milestone which was the result of intense efforts starting 13 years ago when I first decided to apply for a Ph.D. position in migration studies at the University of Ghana. Now, this milestone quietly appeared as an automated email among many in my inbox. The communication indicated that the first paper out of my thesis had been published in a peer-reviewed journal!
The journal is called the Journal of International Mobility and is a French journal – I just love how abstract and bio is also available in another language. It is also an open-access journal meaning researchers and others can read it for free and download /télécharcher it as it is not behind a paywall. I found it as they were publishing work on academic mobility, international student migration and I thought it could be a good fit.
What does it mean to publish a paper?
This means a section of my research is now available for easy consumption and critique. That means I am part of a global conversation about my topic, much more than if I only left results in my 300+ page dissertation (PDF). In this paper, I chose to focus on my quantitative data (two more papers out of my thesis yet to be published have a more qualitative focus drawing on focus groups and interviews) on student migration aspirations.
Morover, I contextualize the situation for student migrants out of the global south – unequal access to higher education, under- and unemployment after graduation, hardship acquiring visas to further studies abroad, the global knowledge society where student migrants provide 3% of trade in services in the OECD. I explain how Ghana is a good case study with outmigration among highly skilled close to Africa’s average and high levels of graduate unemployment. I review the international student migration (ISM) literature and suggest students from the global south are understudied. I ask: “Do students from the global south aspire to be mobile? Are they mobile? How do they experience the global knowledge society?” With survey data from 467 Ghanaian students I respond to these questions and find that (quoting from the abstract, or summary):
…the students aspire to migrate, mostly for educational reasons. However, many of these students also aspire to return, others to live transnational lives, and one in twelve students surveyed are not interested in migrating—that is, in leaving Ghana for more than one year. These results show that university students in Ghana often imagine their future at home, but their life strategies include graduate school and gaining work experience abroad. Hence, mobility, but perhaps not necessarily migration, is a central feature of their life aspirations.
What does it really mean to me to publish a paper?
Emotionally, the email and publication shook me to the core. It has been such a long ride and now this seems…small?
Late nights transcribing interviews, tabulating survey data. Versions of this paper dating back to 2017. Having a colleague critique and then rewriting the paper. Getting it rejected once. Getting many comments on what is now the published paper, but pressing through. It was hard until the end, too… The final edited version I had to correct twice (a misunderstanding meant the copyeditor needed the changes in a different format). The emails sent to ask for an update on the process.
Now, I had the email blinking a URL at me on the screen with a “published” in a sentence next to it.
Was this it?
Cheers to a published paper! Photo: Eliza K.
After a drink with my husband to celebrate, and this email to tell you all, I am pressing on with other slow, thoughtful, and important scholarly work. But after taking a few weeks of vacation!
In an ongoing collaboration with Education Subsaharan Africa (ESSA), I was invited to write a blog post for them. I chose to write about the problem of reliable and comparable data on higher education in African countries for ESSA’s “Doing more with Data”-series.
I write:
This year, 9.8 million students in Africa were not able to go to their universities as they used to because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The aggregated estimate (UNESCO) covers the continent as a whole. This data reminds us of a major issue for the African higher education sector – there is not enough detailed, open and recent data to make good policy and research.
While higher education in Africa struggles with resources, relevance and impact it is easy to forget the issue of data for planning. The adage about a group of people describing the different parts of an elephant — and coming back with widely different conclusions about the animal based on describing the trunk or the tail, reminds us of the complex issue at hand. Policy makers, university administrators and researchers of higher education all need quality and timely data points from all levels of the sector: individual departments, universities, countries, regions and continents.
To align this with the elephant story, without a systematic way of describing the sector, we end up with confusing data. With such difficulties it is hard to conclude on basic trends: if the discipline is growing or declining, and subsequently what links the size of the discipline has to democratization and transparent governance…
Joy Owango, Photo borrowed from Africabusinesscommunities.com
Recently, I attended a webinar on the state of open access in Africa where I had a particular use of every presentation, focusing on support for early-career researchers like myself. See my notes with links below. The program was organized by the Training Center in Communication and led by its founding director Joy Owango. After the webinar, I made an interview with Joy Owango and will share some of the highlights of out 45-minute call, but I have cut out our children in both Kenya and Sweden joining us!
What is Training Centre in Communication, (TCC Africa )?
We are a center that supports researchers’ in increasing their research output through training in scholarly and science communication. In addition to this we host monthly thought leadership webinars on capacity building for early career researchers with a focus on open science.
In the beginning, the focus of the center was supporting researchers communicating among themselves, particularly how to write academic papers that could be understood at multidisciplinary levels. Within five years, we broadened the scope and started supporting researchers on how to communicate with non-scientists, even as we are going through this process, I increasingly noted the challenges early career researchers faced in the process of academic publishing.
Before we start crucifying researchers about not being able to write, we need to ask, how are they getting resources for their research discovery? Just by answering this question, our model transformed, which, included providing open access discovery solutions to support their research lifecycle. We do not just offer training, but also advisory services, where we guide institutions on how to set up research and grant offices and also guide governments on ways they can improve on monitoring their research output especially with the support of open data. Before the COVID19 Pandemic hit Africa, we were in Malawi and guided the Government of Malawi through the National Commission of Science and Technology on how they can use Scientometrics and open access data in monitoring research output from the country.
2. What is your funding model?
We are a not for profit organization with a self-sustainable business model, where we charge for our services, and as a result, funding is one of the revenue streams.
3. Do you apply for grants?
Yes, we compete for grants as well, however, it is not our main revenue stream, as it comes with the objectives of the donor and rarely in line with our objectives as such we work with donors who support early career researchers regardless of research background in improving their research output. As a result of this, the donors we have chosen to work with support multidisciplinary research backgrounds and are not restricted to the research interest areas of the African continent (namely research in, health, agriculture, and climate change). This decision was deliberate and 15 years later, we have survived and are self-sustainable. We have seen programs similar to ours come and go as they are 100% reliant on funding and we did not want that as we wanted a more sustainable approach to supporting early career researchers in improving their research output through training.
4. What do you see as the most important issues for higher education on the continent?
Open Science. In its totality from data, infrastructure to academic publishing. Open science is the glue that holds together good quality scientific output from research discovery, academic publishing to dissemination. When a researcher is unable to complete his research due to paywalls, you understand their academic fatigue. Taking a postgraduate course is not easy and limited access to resources to conduct your research can be very frustrating. It was because of the frustrations and academic fatigue I noted in researchers we trained that we thought of getting research industry partners, who supported open science. So when we tell researchers, “you need to be involved in the process of scholarly communication”, it is really the whole research life cycle, from research idea, writing the paper, and the whole process behind it, that helps you write that paper!
5. You founded TCC already in 2006, what is your own journey to where you are now?
From experience, I remember in the early 2000s’ I was studying for a postgraduate certificate in Mass communication research and the only library in Nairobi that had the latest resources in my research area was at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). For five days I sat in that library until 8 pm when they shut down, I would sit outside until midnight as I needed access to the library Wi-Fi and the resources. Fortunately, ILRI is within a campus full of early career researchers, so no one bothered me. This was a typical scenario that early career researchers may face in pursuit of resources for their research discovery process.
If your own university does not have subscriptions to the journals you need, as a student, you are stranded. Even then, I did not understand how bad it was until I got to work with Clarivate Analytics, then Thomson Reuters, and I was like “hold on! this is what I have been asking for… Access to data. But all the good data is behind a paywall!”
When we are talking about open access it is not just journals, it is the whole system! It’s not just “Oh, I want the full-text journal!”, no, it is the research discovery system that needs to be open. I understand there is a business model to it, but it needs to be open because a majority of self-sponsored researchers who may not have adequate support systems fall through the cracks and are unable to complete their education due to lack of resources. In essence, open science democratizes education.
My own reflections from the seminar are that sitting in the middle of the information age exploding, it is easy to just get tired and not research well where you “host” your research, however, it is as important as ever. All the links I shared above are mindblowing in their own way, it is actually as exciting as it is tiring! But you need to understand how to make your research visible and readable to the constituencies you write for! As Joy shared, open access publications in the last two years are many (44%) and growing fast from Africa, however not all fields are well-represented.
The movement toward open science is in a way a “going back” to the foundations of science – sharing progress for the common good – and public and private funders are now going back to this ideal. As a researcher believing in the public good of science, I believe all of us have a responsibility to publish our data and findings open access.
Almost all Swedes are online every day (91%) and use 
Swedes are very positive toward police access to private conversations, and cameras with face recognition in public spaces (possibly due to increased violence) but against employers checking social media. There seems to be a “not in my backyard”-Internet thing going on here…
Different generations use different social media platforms. Favorites in the older generations are YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram (a big share of youth do not use Facebook and Instagram at all) while Snapchat, Tiktok and Roblox are important platforms for “born in the 2000s”. Based on this, are you “old” or “young”?
3/10 Swedes have used an AI tool like Chat GPT, DallE, Midjourney, Grammarly. If you break it down by age, there is a definite gap as 6/10 in the age group 18-34 years have used an AI tool.
Podcast listening in Sweden is still on the increase and public service has transitioned well there!
