Ghana, My Week, Personal, Positive, Promoting

A Whirlwind of Events: #NAD2018, #NEFScienceWeek, #FIFAfrica18, #MIASA

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The fall semester has just started and that means it is like a new year for us academics. I have decided to go back to a paper calendar to make sure I do not overbook myself (when the space for a day is filled, my day is filled!). However, September was slightly overfilled anyways. But with some great events:

#NAD2018

Nordic Africa Days is a biannual conference organized by the Nordic Africa Institute. It is my “home conference” as a Swedish researched in Ghana and I have been attending since 2007!

This year, I organized a panel session with my colleague Michael Boampong called Conceptualizing Youth Mobilities and presented a paper within it.

 

#NEFScienceWeek

Next Einstein forum contacted me about moderating a panel which proved to be very interesting where industry representative Ethel Cofie or Women in Tech/ Edel Consulting Ltd met education representative Dr. Patrick Arthur from University on Ghana on the gap between STEM education and industry. Some highlights from the conversations:

  • Review primary education to make sure we educate producers (eg. programmers), not consumers (eg. users of Word and PowerPoint).
  • Make sure the higher education sector is wired for innovation by having incentive structures not just for peer-reviewed journal articles, but also for innovation/entrepreneurial initiative.


  • #NEFScienceWeek

#FIFAfrica18

Forum for Internet Freedom in Africa organized by CIPESA and MFWA is something I luckily happened to come across as I was doing research for a new project I have initiated on Internet Freedom and Internet Shutdowns. It turned out the experts were on their way to Accra! The same week as finding out about this conference, I was able to join its last afternoon. It was a fantastic networking opportunity and the sessions I visited launched reports like The State of Internet Freedom in Africa and the Internet Universality Indicators, discussed how to measure Internet Shutdowns and how to advocate effectively for them not happening.

#MIASA

The Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa funded by the German government had its inaugural conference at University of Ghana – I only made it to the very final and concluding session. The institute has planned for some interdisciplinary and interesting studies investigating big issues, from the concluding presentation, however, I worry that the research groups and methods seemed to already have been decided in Germany and that could mean the so-called collaboration in actual fact is only a satellite department of a German institution coming to Ghana. I hope I am wrong…

My paper calendar…

…is that beautiful blue book with gold details. On the inside it gives me a full week’s overview and just enough space to list my meetings and main to-dos for each day. I realize it is less stressful to have a finite space for planning my time.

How do you make sure your days and weeks are not overfilled, but allow for quality work and breathing pauses?

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Ghana

Yielding Accomplished African Women Speaker

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Last week, I was a speaker at the Yielding Accomplished African Women (Yaa W) Program. It is a summer program for Ghanaian female university students, including some of my own students from Ashesi University – that serves as a Finance and Technology Accelerator!

The program is the brainchild of Diana Wilson (in the first photo with me below), a graduate of University of Virginia, who has a truly interdisciplinary or even liberal arts background of studying Sociology, Women lib studies and Finance. In her commerce internships she saw a gap of assertive black women and decided to do something about it. During her senior year of college she has enlisted colleagues to help her out and this summer it happened. Read Diana’s statement about the leadership program she created named after Yaa Asantewaa here. What if more people were like Diana? What a wonderful world it would be…

I have been thinking a lot about the talks I do outside of work and how to make sure they are impactful and also rewarding for me. I think maybe I will insist in the future on longer sessions such as the 3 hour session I did with Yaa W and smaller groups. I very much enjoyed talking to the young women in the program about wellness-work-love-fun-development balance (borrowed heavily from OneStep’s Success audit), love-bombing over criticising, and elevator pitches / first impressions.

I was happy to be able to assist in a mission I believe in and felt after a halfday of leadership discussions I had made 10 new friends!

What talks do you happily give outside of work?

With Diana and her team.

 

In the conference room with the students.

 


In the sun after our session!

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Kajsa HA's Social Media, Parenting, Personal

How Are You Managing Your Screen Time?

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Because I love technology and social media, I feel like I have been quite conscious of my screen time. Since more than a year, all notifications are off my phone. I use the app “Focus” to turn off the internet on my phone (it also helps with working with the pomodoro technique). After reading Adriana Huffington’s book on sleep, I also parked my phone – turned off! –  in a different room during the night and am awoken by an old-fashioned alarm clock. All in the name of limiting my screen time and not being dragged down the rabbit-hole of smartphones.

Sadly, I also agree with Jim Kwik who suggest that smartphones make us less smart!

However, all of this seems to not be enough to manage my time in front of a screen. Indeed, Catherine Price who wrote a book about breaking up with your phone, and a New York Times article that sums it up, suggests it took her two years!  When I heard on the news Apple is including such a control mechanism for parents and individuals in their next OS, I thought to myself I NEED THIS NOW and started researching programs for both me and my 7-year-old. This is what I found.

 

FOR ME: Space. Free app, upgrade available USD 1.99 (but actually I am not sure what the upgrade does).

I liked the design and step-by-step idea that “diagnoses” your particular problem (I am a “boredom battler”) as well as the pop-ups and idea of dimming of the screen. It is also free! That is a pretty great feature when comparable apps charge a monthly cost.

 

FOR THE KID: Habyts. Free for 14 days and after that USD 3.29 or 7.99/month depending on services needed. The more expensive upgrade include chores that your kid can do for extra points or minutes.

Further, Habyts was the only app I could find that both allowed me to set daily time allowances, remote turn off her device, as well as included the option of adding tasks or chores for her to earn more time.

 

5 days in

We have tried a for a few days and I appreciate the professional help! In addition, what has helped is the idea to limit and track not just duration of each session, but also the number of times one reaches for one’s phone and unlocks it. However, despite warnings, limits and general awareness-raising, it has not been very impactful so far for me. I have not yet met my goals of 1,5 hours max on the smartphone/day (my average is more like the double!) or less than 30 unlocks during a day. Two nights since I started this phone detox, I have also unfortunately late-night-binged on my iPad (where I did not install the program).

My child shows withdrawal symptoms as well and has been angry and demanding. I had to change the lock codes on all my devices as she “jumped” to mine when her time was up! However, the remote shut-down function makes the process of limiting the time (right now the same 90 minutes a day) easier than earlier and I recognize that it helps for thinking of other things to do that I am also off my phone!

I will follow up again when some more time has passed to tell you how we are doing.

How do you limit screen time in your family?

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Ghana

Becoming Ghanaian: Registration as a Citizen Part 2

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On Wednesday, I submitted my application to register as a Ghanaian citizen to the Ministry of Interior (MINT). I described the first step of the process in Registration as a Citizen Part 1. Between then and now, I was making sure all paperwork ( see a checklist in the earlier post) was in order and properly copied. 

Next steps

I was told the next step (to be expected in a few weeks) is a letter sent to Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) for them to start their investigation. GIS will call me in for an interview. Then GIS will write a report to be handed back to MINT. The folder will then be sent with a recommendation to the president. The whole process takes 6-12 months.

 

Group effort

I am part of a group of several foreigners living in Ghana applying this year. We are all members of the International Spouses of Ghanaians (ISAG) group. We have a WhatsApp group where we share information and cheer each other on. It has been very helpful and I encourage anyone who has to go through larger application processes to organize with others or join already available groups, for instance on Facebook. The group I Väntan På Familjen for instance shares info on family-related residence permits to Sweden.

The officers at the ministry are also very helpful and friendly. I spent less than 15 minutes getting my application reviewed and submitted.

 

Clarification on completing the application

Submitting the paperwork to office 17 I learned:

  1. The application sponsors ( in my case, a lawyer friend and a family member in the public sector) should ideally use their STAMP under their signature when signing the form. (Nowhere is that indicated on the form or checklist). I had letters from the sponsors in addition, one of them luckily with a stamp, so it passed with some frowns.
  2. The MINT officers did not ask for a police report (something we were told when buying the forms but was not on the checklist).
  3. Before submitting, a Notary Public stamps the application. You can find one to put a red seal on your application at the High Court (around the block from the Ministry of Interior) for GHS 50.

If you have any questions about the process, I will try and answer them. I will also continue reporting here about the progress of my application to naturalize!

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Ghana, Political

Learn about the Issues from UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

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I shared the following with the Ashesi Community and thought I might also share it with my readers:

The UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Prof. Philip Alston has concluded his visit to Ghana and will fast-track his full rapport to come out in June (as opposed to often a year after the visit). While we wait for the full rapport on the situation for the most vulnerable Ghanaians, we can read his press statement.

I believe this statement is important anyone who:

  • Wishes to be well-informed on the situation on the ground for Ghanaians when it comes to extreme poverty.
  • Would like a well-respected human rights professor’s view on the most pressing human rights issues of Ghana (Prof Alston earlier visited USA and Nigeria to do similar reports).
  • is planning impactful research, as the press statement is a good starting point for current and relevant data and for pointing out pressing areas for intervention.

Some highlights from the press statement:

Issues where the topics of human rights and extreme poverty intersect: Gender, Criminal Justice, Urban Poverty, people living in informal settlements, sexual orientation and gender identity, persons with disability.

GOOD NEWS: “Ghana remains a champion of democracy in Africa, and its record in achieving certain Millennium Development Goals by 2015 is impressive. It met the targets for halving extreme poverty and halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, and it achieved the goals relating to universal primary education and gender parity in primary school. Today, it is set to become Africa’s fastest-growing economy in 2018.”

BAD NEWS (echoing the poverty research carried out by Dr. Cooke) “Inequality is higher than it has ever been in Ghana, while almost one-quarter of the population lives in poverty and one person in every twelve lives in extreme poverty. Spending on social protection is very low by the standards of most comparable African countries, and very little is spent on social assistance. Ghana has many admirable programs, but no discernible plans for funding many of them adequately. As a result, a large number of Ghanaian do not enjoy their basic economic and social human rights and the prospects for meeting many of the Sustainable Development Goals are not encouraging.”

I had the opportunity to interact with Prof Alston and his team while in Ghana and look forward to the full-text report in June and also the debate his visit to Ghana will spur ( I have already seen headings where the government “slams back” etc), hopefully to the benefit of the most vulnerable in our country.

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Blogging, BloggingGhana, Ghana

Kajsa Featured on 3FM’s segment Women Mean Business

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Last week, I was a featured woman on the Women MEan Business segment on newish radio channel 3FM. I spoke to the host Winston about my work at Ashesi and with BloggingGhana, higher education, Ghanaian food and more!

I was surprised to see 2000 people have seen the Facebook Live version of my interview. Now you can too!

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Ghana

Becoming Ghanaian: Registration as a Citizen Part 1

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About two years ago, I saw a newspaper article about a citizenship ceremony held in Accra. In the photo illustrating the article was a small group of well-dressed, brand new Ghanaians smiling widely. One of them was a fair-skinned woman. I think I was at that moment, a lightbulb lit up in my mind and I thought to myself, “But of course! I will also be a Ghanaian!”

Last year I discussed this idea with the members of the International Spouses of Ghanaians (ISAG), who were most helpful when I was applying for permanent residence eight years ago. Now a handful of us agreed, it would be good to become Ghanaians! One of us went to enquire at the Ministries about the process, another talked to someone who just passed through the process. We were happy to find out that it would not take more than six months and cost GHS 3000, a quite reasonable sum for adding the rights and responsibilities of a whole new country to your person.

 

Why going for a Ghanaian citizenship?

I can think of many reasons ( I will list them all below), but it is based on the general feeling that one should hold a citizenship for the country where one resides permanently, and return readers will know I have lived in Ghana for 10 years now.

Here are all my reasons for going for a Ghanaian citizenship:

  • I live in Ghana and would like to hold all the rights (like voting) and responsibilities (like being involved in local government) as others who live here.
  • My current status could be revoked. I hold an Indefinite Residence permit, but have to ask permission to leave Ghana for more than one year. The Ghanaian government could say they don’t like my reason for staying away, and revoke my indefinite residence permit. If I get divorced, I am also not sure what happens to the indefinite residence permit as it is based on being a spouse of a Ghanaian.
  • My children and spouse are Ghanaians. At this stage, my husband has no reason to apply for Swedish nationality, but it would still be practical and nice to all have the same citizenship.
  • I would also like to inspire and perhaps even surprise jaded Ghanaians who think there is nothing to gain from being a Ghanaian citizen. I would be proud to be part of the nation that has such rich cultures, languages, and practises, that first gained independence from the colonial power, that has gold and diamonds, vast forests and beautiful shores…
  •  Easier African travel is a plus!

 

Starting the process

 

 

 

 

 

 

Together with my fellow applicant Nancy we signed in at the Ministry of Interior at 10.20am. We were directed to Room 17 to share details. In the small office, three officers sat by their desks. We were asked how long we had resided in Ghana and the room fell quiet when Nancy calmly said “41 years”. My 10 years seemed feeble in this context. We were asked for our nationality and brought our passports to show our full legal names. There was a Notice on the wall that a third party cannot come for the registration or naturalization form.

We were told to go to Room 24 to make payments. After we had paid the GHS 3000 and been issued with a receipt, we went back to the first room, obtained a checklist (see below) of all the documents we need to attach to our application, a form for sponsors to fill, and the application form. We asked some questions to clarify. We found for instance that although not specified in the checklist, we also need a police report, two sponsors to fill forms AND write letters on our behalf. Sponsors should ideally be a senior government officer and a lawyer. After only 25 minutes in the ministry we had come to the end of the first step of the process, we asked one of the officers to take a photo of us with our brown envelopes containing the application forms to let us remember this big day and at 10.46 am we signed out!

 

First Step of the Process of becoming a Ghanaian citizen

The first step definitely was most fact-finding, psychological and personal, and just to a small extent administrative. The process seems to be quite straightforward, the hardest part at the ministry was finding parking! Now I have some work to do to complete my application. I will keep you posted on the next steps.

If you have any questions, please post them below and I will do what I can to help.

 

————————————

Checklist: Requirements (taken from the Ministry of Interior’s website).

NB: Applicant should reside in the country for at least 5years

  • Purchase (Application form 3)
  • Copy of Passport (Bio Data Page)
  • Current OR Indefinite Residence Permit page
  • Copy of (Spouse) Ghanaian Passport (Bio-data page)
  • Consent letter from Spouse
  • Copy of marriage Certificate
  • Naturalization Certificate (if spouse is a naturalized Ghanaian)
  • A citizen of age and capacity of any approved country may upon an application, and with the approval of the President be registered as a citizen of Ghana if he satisfies the Minister that;
  • (1)He is of good character, (2) he is ordinarily residence in Ghana, (3) he has been resident throughout the period of five years or such shorter period as the Minister may in the special circumstances of any particular case accept, immediately before the application, (4) he can speak and understand an indigenous language of Ghana.
  • Application letter addressed to the Minister, Ministry of the Interior (P.O. BOX M42, Accra)
  • Four (4) Passports Size Pictures

 

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Ghana, Sunday Reads

Sunday Reads Jan 21, #KajsaHASundayReads

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sundayreadsThis week I read:

Video I watched: I got a little addicted to the entertaining Crash Course series on YouTube where John Green and his brother teaches you all kinds of stuff!

 

Tell me below what you are reading!

 This post is part of my #KajsaHASundayReads series. Inspired by personal role models, Ory Okolloh Mwangi and Chris Blattman,  I want to share articles I read with my followers on a somehow regular basis. 

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Blogging, Ghana, Personal, Social Media, Sweden

Best Nine of 2017 (and worst!)

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It is time to summarize the year. These days it is easily done on Instagram and the Best Nine feature. As you can see it is a steady stream of colorful moments, from the top: 1. My sister-in-law Jenny and my niece Sapfo (Ghana style carried thanks to me!) discussing art in the Gallery at the plush Movenpick hotel, 2. My children being educated on how to pluck a chicken, 3. New dress from Kiki Clothing, 4. Chilling with Stonebwoy, 5. A blast from the past – my first visit to Ghana in 2004, 6. Ellen taking a stroll in our backyard, 7. Old dress at work, 8. SOS Tema School children very much related to me, 9. My kids at the Nubuke Foundation wall painted by children under the competent leadership of artist Bernard Akoi-Jackson.

So two moments at work, four with my kids, two with other kids, two in wax print fashion – three if you count baby carrying, one ninth hanging out with a celebrity, two in art spaces, one part remembering the past…

On the blog I have celebrated 10 years of living in Ghana, I have represented Sweden, stayed off social media for three weeks, shared the contents of my bag, been featured on one of my fav podcasts, and joined the debate on rape culture.

Of course, we all know these fav Instagram moments or blog posts are in no way representative of the year we have had, they are simply highlights or slivers of truth.

The nine worst moments were not shared on social media at all, but they were also part of my life. I have been misunderstood and mistaken. I have gone through loss, loneliness, stress, sickness, disappointment, while abroad I was locked into a glass cube at 5 am and saw my train to the airport depart without me (this should be its own blog post as I finally managed to break out McGuyver-style after realizing nobody would come to save me).

The worst moments on Instagram?

Well, apparently you do not like when I share photos of random documents or PTA meetings! But, of course as a blogger and lecturer, I do look at text much more than I do many other things…(Statistics from GabStats)

I am looking forward to 2018 and hope to meet you on Instagram, here on the blog, or somewhere else in this wondrous world. Thanks for reading!

 

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Ghana

Obtaining a Visa in the Era of “Beyond Aid”

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In the world of fake news, this long but very true read on document fraud in Ghana caught my mind over the long weekend.

The thriller-like article by Yepoka Yeebo was published in the Guardian and argues that document fraud for visa applications represent a vicious circle because if more suspicious applications are submitted, additional checks are put in place by adding required documents. And the more tedious the application, the more room for so-called “connection men” to carry out their business. The more people who provide fraudulent papers or overstay their visas, the harder visa applications are scrutinized…

In my research on student migrants, I have come across conversations pointing to how difficult it is to obtain visas, or get one’s application “bounced” as the students say, even for university students, a group which should be desirable labor migrants by the Global North.

However, I have also been puzzled by the open advertising of visa “help”, which also suggests visa applications really are an industry, as discussed below:

“In 2010, as the number of fake travel documents continued to rise, Ghana’s government founded the Document Fraud Expertise Centre, which verifies documents for embassies, banks and the police. It’s the only one in West Africa, which reflects the sheer scale of Ghana’s shadow visa industry. In 2016, about half the documents submitted to them for testing turned out to have been forged.”

Importantly, this long read contextualized the issue well, added the quite central fact that an application fee for instance for a United States visa is USD 160 (or about GHS 700 or 75% of a median Ghanaian salary). The fee is, of course, non-refundable, and you can get denied at any point without recourse. Still, as an individual, if you see little hope for the future where you are, you might still decide to apply…

…and on a macro level this issue kind of came up when French president Macron passed through Ghana last week. In a meet-the-press setting, Ghana’s president Akufo-Addo re-stated his “beyond aid” agenda and exclaimed,

“We want young Africans to stay in Africa [audience applause], we have to get away from this mindset of dependence!” See the full inspired response by president Akufo-Addo below which has been much discussed on social media.

Just words? Well, taxes are being collected in Ghana as never before. Free SHS has been rolled out. Development partners are already leaving Ghana as it is classified as a middle-income nation and hence not a priority. But the jobs? Yeebo reminds us in the article that only 10% of Ghanaians have a salaried job and outside the American embassy, a queue has formed since the early morning. Out of the Ghanaians waiting there, a majority will not get their visas this time either.

This article has been on my mind ever since I read it a few days ago. If you want to understand the entangled and yes, dependent relationship, between the Global North and the Global South (both directions!), I suggest you read it too.

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Crafts, Ghana, Parenting, Promoting, Teaching

How can we better educate our children?

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Have you ever thought about the difference between being imaginative and being creative? Last week, I went to a book launch where educator Dr. Naomi Adjepong of Alpha Beta Education Centers asked this question. She suggested that imagination exists just in our head, while creativeness is acted out. Her context was Ghanaian education. Are we educating creatives in Ghana?

At the same event, spelling bee champion Eugenia Tachie-Menson spoke on how education can be fun and how reading books for pleasure is a wonderful way of improving both your thinking and vocabulary. (The event was fellow blogger Golda Addo’s book launch for her novel “The Shimmer in the Photo Album”, Golda is in the orange boubou below, next to Tachie-Menson).

I am lucky to send my children to a private school where both teachers and administrators are happy to take up suggestions from parents, however, they tell me that more often than not the parents that approach them demand “more exams, more exercises, and more sitting in the classroom”.

Personally, I would rather see children under the age of 5 or even 10 spend more time outdoors playing than sitting still and quiet in the classroom. The start-up Tinkergarten, sponsored by among others Omidyar Group, is developing outdoor activities to encourage children “tinkering” or playing outdoors. Activities include looking at bugs, making soap bubbles, or building a bird nest for humans! They write on their website:

“Tinkergarten’s curriculum both engages and delights a wide range of kids ages 18 months-8 years old. As a season unfolds, unique themes and challenges build lesson to lesson. These themes and challenges evolve one season to the next as children progress through the program. In each lesson, an engaging scenario unfolds that allows kids to launch and direct their own play. No two kids ever have the same experience, because it’s the process that matters. Adults play a role, too, as they observe, honor and support their child’s independent exploration and playful learning.”

To prepare our children for the future, I believe they have to be able to read and write, count and perhaps also march in rows, but importantly, in addition, they also need practice communication, empathy, solving problems in groups, building things, asking questions,seeing new places, adapting to different environments, failing and dusting themselves off to try again.

Are we educating creatives in Ghana? And if we are not, what will be the consequences?

Photo : Paul Ninson

 

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Ghana

Meeting My Idol: Prof. Jorgen Carling

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This weekend I had the unmitigated pleasure of meeting one of my foremost academic idols: Professor Jorgen Carling. I have followed his work on migration aspirations and his work informed much of the theoretical frame for my dissertation.

His research is thoughtful, pedagogic, built on extensive research in Cape Verde, and communicated in simple and straightforward prose in the top migration journals. But also, and this, of course, impresses me, on social media (@jorgencarling) as well as on his amazing blog, see this very useful post about academic publishing for instance.

 

While we have been connected over the internet, we have never met. He lives in Norway (and in Netherlands for a bit) and I am in Ghana, of course. Over the years, I have tried to get into workshops he has led, conference panels he has organized, but without luck. I have continued to keep him posted on my progress via email and sent him my dissertation once it was completed and passed the examination.

 

Then a few weeks ago I get an email with the subject: “Jorgen to Ghana”. I shriek with joy and can’t believe my luck when my academic idol of the last five years is coming to visit Tema. Finally on Saturday evening he lands. On Sunday, I pick him up from his hotel just minutes away from my house, show him around the center of the world (Tema), and invite him to eat a hearty Sunday lunch of boiled plantain and kontomire stew in my garden with my family.

 

Here is a photo from the happy occasion.

 

How was it meeting my idol in real life? He was cool.

 

Just as I had imagined he was calm and kind in a very Norwegian way. His comments on my work – I was very excited to realize he had actually read it – and careful advise on publishing helped me over some mind-hurdles. I was, however, a little nervous, kind of extatic and…wordy. So now,  I have resolved to work on going from a far-away-fan to a useful and levelheaded colleague. 

When did you meet an idol and what happened?

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