Knowing The Dreams Of Young People Is Important

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.

But there’s also good news. Many young people are getting access to secondary education and an increasing number also university education. An increasing share of youth in Africa are university students, 9% in 2018.

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. “

Wachira Warukira, photo from Waruks Productions.

Kenyan music producer Wachira Warukira, writes in New African Magazine about how Covid hit his dream and business:

“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.

Want to know more about this topic? Read the entire New African Magazine issue and my article on The Conversation. Follow Wachira Warukira’s work at Waruks Productions.

Continue Reading

You may also like

A strong EU, in Sweden’s interest

 

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.

You find the anthology (in Swedish) here: https://www.globalutmaning.se/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2021/05/Ett-starkt-och-ha%CC%8Allbart-EU-i-Sveriges-intresse.pdf

Continue Reading

You may also like

Ghana Elections 2020, A Step Forward for Women

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.

The event was held on November 9th and now with days to the election, the Policy Note is in! The text was written together with one of the panelists from the event, a real Ghanaian scholarly treasure, Prof Kwesi Aning of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping and Training Centre!

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.

Read it in full here in PDF, Issuu and here in an online version.

Continue Reading

You may also like

Slow and Small Victories: Getting an Academic Paper Published

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!

Find the paper in full (open access) here: Student migration aspirations and mobility in the global knowledge society: The case of Ghana

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!

Read more about my Ph.D. project on its website StudentMigrationAspirations.com

Continue Reading

You may also like

Guest Blog Post at ESSA Website

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.

At the Nordic Africa Institute we have been mapping the discipline of political science on the continent, we realized it was impossible to find comparable data on the number of students by discipline over time. The same was true for data on professors in the discipline.

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…

Read the whole blog post on ESSA’s Website.

Continue Reading

You may also like

Policy Note on Key Challenges for African Universities

Last month, the NAI policy note I have been working on for a while now was published. Find it here: Resources, Relevance, and Impact – Key Challenges for African Universities. (link to PDF)

Abstract

Global and regional goals, such as Agenda 2030 and the African Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa, foreground higher education as an engine for development and job creation. Yet, many African universities perform weakly in international comparison. This policy note looks at the challenges in strengthening the freedom, relevance and impact of research and higher education in Africa.

The Recommendations In Short

Writing for Clarity

As a researcher who is also a blogger, I am very much interested in the availability and ease of use of my research. Even though I went into the process of writing for a policy audience highly motivated, I was challenged by the level of work that goes into a shorter paper simplifying the issues.

After writing and rewriting a text that in the end was 1000 words longer than the format, I had several of my researcher colleagues read early drafts and come with comments – especially how to phrase recommendations and limit the scope I found tricky. Next, our communication unit read the text and we had conversations on what aspects to visualize and what to cut out, and then there was (very much needed) language editing. It is actually quite scary when I saw how many words can be altered for clarity, thinking about how I have gladly been pressing “publish” on the blog for many years without any such editing! Then a few back-and-forth-emails on final titles, illustrations and other details – and then four months later – voilà: The finished Policy Note.

Please download, share, and let me hear your comments!

Continue Reading

You may also like

New Publication: Digital and Decolonial Experiments in the Classroom

At the end of 2018, I sat next to a man in a crowded auditorium at University of Ghana for the International Communication Association Africa conference (ICA Africa). I introduced myself and after the opening keynotes (Ghanaian Vice President Bawumiah and Cameroonian Professor Nyamnjoh), we couldn’t help but debrief together on how interesting it was. The man I was talking to was Communications Professor Kehbuma Langmia of Howard University. As we stood there, I told him about my work at Ashesi University, he attended my Policy Lab presentation on Internet Freedoms, and later invited me to contribute a chapter to a book he was putting together. Now the book Digital Communications at Crossroads in Africa: A Decolonial Approach is out!

In my chapter, Digital Communication Tools in the Classroom as a Decolonial Solution: Pedagogical Experiments from Ashesi University in Ghana, I argue digital communication tools like Twitter and Wikipedia can decolonize not just minds, but classrooms too, as the tools support students and lecturers together to rethink, reimagine, and reshape knowledge production.

In the chapter, thought hard about the idea — at this point-in-time almost catchphrase — “decolonizing the university” and what it really means, like HOW do we DO it? As part of understanding the many possible meanings, I outlined five aspects of decolonizing the university. I deduced it is ultimately about sharing power with students, examining implications about what we include and exclude in our classroom conversations and course outlines, changing the content, providing epistemological access, and finally decolonizing also the institutions.

After arriving at these five aspects of decolonizing the university, I wanted to say something about how digital communication tools can address or bridge these aspects. See figure below.

If you click on the linked button below, you can get a preview of my chapter.

I would love to hear what you think of my ideas and the operationalization of decolonization of universities into five aspects. What did I overstate or miss entirely? Do you agree digital tools can be of help or are they merely new, sexier methods to further colonize the world-at-large by the few?

I would like to thank the editors of the volume Dr. Agnes Lucy Lando of Daystar University, Kenya and Dr. Kehbuma Langmia for open arms and good collaboration, Open Foundation West Africa for assisting with Wikimedia in the classroom, and colleagues and students at Ashesi University, Ghana.

Continue Reading

You may also like

My story up on the PhD Career Stories Podcast

Kajsa is holding a mic.
Photo: OP studios

Do you want to know…. what a morning in my home office sounds like?

What I did when I wanted to quit the PhD program?

How activism and teaching are very good companions to research?

…and what I did after completing my dissertation and finally sleeping properly again?

Yes? Then what are you waiting for? Tune into my story on the PhD Career Stories Podcast.

Continue Reading

You may also like

The Recent Royal Visits on Africa Is A Country

At the end of last year, I saw how Prince Charles of Wales was welcomed to Ghana – pomp, circumstance, and reverence – during his royal visit to West Africa.

I had an eerie feeling until I saw the billboards where Prince Charles and Ghana’s president stood together under the text “Shared History, Shared Future”. How could we understand this? To understand (but also fuelled by anger and disgust at this public, at very best, omission), I blogged and attended an event at Libreria to decolonise and discuss, but only this year with another visit, that of the Hollywood actors in the FullCircleFestival, I could tie it all up in a bow in an essay for Africa is a Country.

Find the essay here.

Continue Reading

You may also like

Ethical Higher Education: The Ashesi University Case

My article from last year on how we educate leaders with a focus on ethics was in the news again this week, this time in English!

I wrote:

“Africa is still the continent with the lowest level of university enrolment, at about 6% of the population compared to a 26% world average, according to UNESCO. What this means is that extremely few Africans ever get a chance to go to university. And those who do are destined to become leaders in society.

With this analysis, Ashesi University College has aimed to bring scholarships to deserving students, quality education to those who can afford, and making sure the future leaders of the continent are both ethical and entrepreneurial.”

But educating ethical leaders in a corrupt environment marred with inequality is a challenge.”

I also mention my taxing commute, here is one small section of it as recently shared with Facebook Live.

Read the whole article over at University World News.

Enjoy!

Continue Reading

You may also like

Ashesi in Swiss Newspaper NZZ

Screenshot 2016-06-29 15.56.32

 

Earlier in the spring, I was asked to write about Ashesi University for a Swiss newspaper, NZZ. Under the theme “The Other Africa”, I wrote about teaching ethics in Ghana illustrated by my own experiences and that of students and an alumn.

My Ashesi article under the headline “Hauptfach: Ethik von Kajsa Hallberg Adu” was recently published in the newspaper in a special issue on Africa in the excellent company of write-ups by Ghanaian-Afropolitan novelist Taiye Selasi, correspondent extraordinaire Alex Perry, and an article on smartphones in Africa by literary scholar Mohomodou Houssouba.

Find an English version of my article below:

Major: Ethics

(my original heading was “The Rough Road to Educating Ethical Leaders in Africa” alas…)

On the red, dusty road an hour from Ghana’s bustling capital of Accra, children play and goats scoff around for something to eat. I drive through the village; expertly avoiding the potholes, pass the police barrier, the water well, and the primary school before I make a sharp turn to climb the lush, green hill. Up there, I wave a greeting to the woman selling pineapples before I pull into the 100-acre well-manicured campus. I teach at a non-religious, private liberal arts college called Ashesi University College, located in the town of Berekuso in Ghana’s Eastern region. I work in an institution that has the, perhaps lofty, mission of educating a new generation of ethical and entrepreneurial leaders in Africa.

Ashesi, as it is called for short, means “beginning” in local language Twi and is known for pushing the bar of private higher education in Africa, especially in terms of ethics and liberal arts. Perhaps others might also know of Ashesi as its founder and president is a very hands-on and influential leader. Dr. Patrick Awuah has been on the management listings of the world like Forbes 2015 World’s 50 Best Leaders, Fast Company where he was listed as number 87 of 100 Most Creative in Business 2010, and last year Dr. Awuah received the MacArthur “Genius Grant”. He can often be seen in the campus cafeteria having lunch with students and colleagues. In my view, Ashesi ought to be more known for is its recent pledge to run an engineering program for 50/50 men and women, something many top universities across the globe have not been able to do.

Since I was first introduced to the liberal arts institution in a 2007 TED video with Dr. Awuah and subsequently started to work there in 2009, much has happened in terms of growth and reach, but the focus on ethics, entrepreneurship, and leadership remains. The university college has doubled in size to 600 students of which 47% are women, 53% men. Ashesi has grown to have four undergraduate programs: engineering, business administration, management information systems, and computer science. While a majority of students come from Ghana, the institution aims to be pan-African with 21% of students from outside the country. The decision to make admissions gender-balanced was a pioneering move that impacts daily life at the university and underlines that women and men have an equal role to play in problem solving on all levels.

Africa is still the continent with the lowest level of university enrollment, at about 6% of the population compared to a 26% world average, according to UNESCO. What this means is that extremely few Africans ever get a chance to go to university. And those who do are destined to become leaders in society. With this analysis Ashesi University College has aimed to bring scholarships to deserving students, quality education to those who can afford, and making sure the future leaders of the continent are both ethical and entrepreneurial. But educating ethical leaders in a corrupt environment marred with inequality is a challenge. Ghana and its neighbors repeatedly scores high in corruption listings such as Afrobarometer or Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index and a recent particularly shocking corruption scandal exposed judges in Ghana’s legal system accepting cash bribes to skew verdicts. Related is the hierarchal structure of the society that will make many visitors raise an eyebrow at Dr. Awuah’s presence in the cafeteria queue. At other Ghanaian universities, the leadership would go to lunch in separate senior clubs with air conditioning, service at the table, and not feeling they missed out at all from not talking to students.

In this context, it makes sense that Ashesi’s approach to teaching ethics is hydra headed and importantly stretches over the four years of the undergraduate program. In essence the Ashesi way teaches you to see yourself as the beginning of an ethical society. Second-year student Sihle Magagula summarizes the method as “continuous reflection on your actions and their outcome”. In the freshman year, ethics is taught in a course called Giving Voice to Values, developed by business lecturer Dr. Mary Gentile of American liberal arts institution Babson College. This curriculum is very practical as it assumes we all know what is wrong from right and focuses on giving tools for speaking up. Local examples include values conflicts where your supportive uncle both gives you a job and asks you do act unethically. There are also ethics components in other Ashesi courses, from Design to Communication, and in the four-year leadership seminar. For instance, in designing a solution it is ethical to involve the beneficiaries of your solution on all levels of development. In ethical communication, giving credit to your sources is key. In the final year leadership seminar, which aims to develop students’ social consciousness, students do service learning in the community. Student Mawuli Adjei says of the experience that “this might seem obvious, but directly interacting with a problem’s stakeholders rather than just reading about them compels me to empathize and personalize the problems that I am solving”. Hence, ethics at Ashesi ultimately about being more than a shiny ivory tower: we see ourselves as a part of the town of Berekuso and some collaborative efforts include a football field, a literacy program for adults, and adding value to the most common cash crop in the area, the pineapple. All these programs are student-led.

Another aspect of Ashesi’s ethics instruction is the Ashesi Honor Code that allows students to take exams without proctoring. The Honor Code is signed on by one year-group at a time after extensive deliberation and agreeing by voting. The model has received keen interest from the surrounding society. In 2009, the National Accreditation Board threatened to stop Ashesi’s operations over the Honor Code, but was persuaded by letters from students, parents, faculty and staff of the benefits of practicing ethics in university through unproctored exams. Recently the Honor Code system has been piloted at another university in Ghana and adopted at lower level schools.

Alumnus Anna Amegatcher of Ashesi’s class of 2014 now works as a market researcher and business analyst in Accra. She agrees ethics was part of every course at Ashesi: “It is not necessarily explicitly said, but from day one ethics like the honor code or ethics like when we came to Berekuso having shared kitchens, ethics was always sounding. I think at a point it was sounding more with students than even with the administration, which was good. It became a part of the student body. The message was there.” The kitchen comment relates to trusting others to not steal your foodstuffs. However, a recent series of thefts on campus – of electronic devices and other items – has startled the university and seen us take steps to reinforce the practice of ethics. How can we make sure our campus is inclusive? How can we make sure ethics is lived and not just spoken? The sense of urgency around these efforts shows the Ashesi level of engagement with ethics is a visible, constant struggle, and an ongoing conversation.

In her office in Accra, alumnus Anna Amegatcher suggests her ethics training is central to her carrying out her job: “It has just kept me conscious. It has become a part of me, like issues of ethics is a part of me. You just can’t take it out of me. Fortunately, it had been nurtured in me even before Ashesi, but I got to appreciate an organization was valuing it as something core to them.”

The goal of educating ethical entrepreneurial leaders in Africa might seem lofty, but is there really any other way? Having taught at Ashesi University College for six years has been personally challenging in many ways, not least because of a commute on an unfinished road winding through the Ghanaian countryside, as well as mitigating Ashesi’s high ethical standards in a surrounding society that might not always appreciate you speaking up. But there is the rewarding side as well. I work with young people who are excited to learn and take on challenges. Additionally, I have been privileged to see our alumni little by little effect change in Ghana and beyond. Importantly, Ashesi also pushes the envelope by introducing a “new normal” or new benchmarks for businesses and universities in the region, the continent, and the world.

 

Continue Reading

You may also like