BloggingGhana, Ghana, People, Positive

Remembering Herman Chinery-Hesse: Innovation, Humor, and Humanity

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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.

RIP Herman Chinery-Hesse.

Tech pioneer Herman Chinery-Hesse passes away
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Ghana

On the Twitter LinkedIn Index for Scientists (#TwiLiIndex)

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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!

My entry in the index.

What is this index?

The Scientists on Social Media rating was developed by journalist and social media specialist Mike Young. It is called the #TwiLiIndex (pronounced “twiligh index”).

I was not the only one from my institution. No from KTH Royal Institute of Technology the colleagues on the index (their ratings in brackets) were Tigran Haas (20), Ricardo Vinuesa (25), Eva Hartell (56), Lucie Delemotte (68), and Cecilia Hermansson (86). I am organizing a learning lunch for us to meet in person and am looking forward to hearing about my colleagues’ best practises, strategies and ideas.

Online presence for scholars

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!

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Ghana, Kenya, Political, Published Elsewhere

Knowing The Dreams Of Young People Is Important

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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.

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Ghana, Personal, PhD

Tema Life: Beind the scenes of shooting the documentary

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For the Ghana Studies Association conference with the theme “Ghana as Center”, I decided to make a dream come true and make a documentary about my hometown for 12 years – the city of Tema.

The film “Tema Life: City of the Future” will be presented in a panel about Tema – the city that geographically is the center of the world.

The panel is in Room 1 at 2.30-4pm on Friday 12 July, 2019.

Here is my writeup about the documentary:

The city of Tema was planned and constructed in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a central part of Ghana’s modernization project. Buildings and areas were purposely designed for industrial, residential or business purposes according to the modern planning ideas of the time as well as socialist ideology. Original inhabitants were moved. The industrial model town was populated by foreign and local workers. By 1960 the city and surrounding areas had 25 000 inhabitants and ten years later just shy of 100 000. The industrial model town had various industries: textiles, radios, soap, motor vehicles, food stuffs, cigarettes and so on and was populated by foreign and local workers. The city was constructed “to be the city of the future” (Ahlman, 2017).

Tema was politically and economically central – in addition to purposely geographically constructed in the Greenwich meridian before it hits the ocean. Later political and economic pressures, including geopolitical changes and the growth of Ghana’s nearby capital Accra and its industrial areas and Tema became peripheral.

This project seeks to collect narratives from the first dwellers in Tema in a documentary film. Young laborers in 1960 would today be in their 80s and hence the time is running out to capture their oral histories about Tema then and now. The narratives will focus on what work, leisure, shopping was like during the early days of Tema and offer Tema’s first inhabitants a space to reflect on how it has changed. Building on the Nana Project by Kirstie Kwarteng that seeks to collect oral histories in Ghana, the conversations will be professionally filmed and the output will be a short documentary and a journal article analyzing their oral histories about the center of the world, Tema.

The team behind the film is scholar Kajsa Hallberg Adu, PhD and filmmaker Mantse Aryeequaye who bring together knowledge of Tema and of documentary film in Ghana. Mantse is a cultural producer and filmmaker perhaps best known for his championing of the street art festival Chale Wote in Accra. He is however also a longtime music and film producer who has worked all over the continent with companies such as MTV, Studio 53, Moonlight Films in Capetown, The Africa Channel, and currently serves as director of Reddkat Pictures and as the co-director of AccraDotAlt.

 Ahlman, J. S. (2017). Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana . Athens, OH, US: Ohio University Press.

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Ghana, PhD, Published Elsewhere

My story up on the PhD Career Stories Podcast

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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.

https://phdcareerstories.com/2019/02/01/067-kajsa-hallberg-adu-story/?fbclid=IwAR1GX6NVkZBunh10rT6RDB6PDOlH9c5QTgxila3ZqHDX_B_Fm5HWXSzw7CU
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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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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

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, Promoting

Last Chance: Orderly/Disorderly BlaxTARLINES Art Exhibit

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Here is an important Public Service Announcement:

The Orderly/Disorderly Art Show curated by Blaxtarlines (follow and support on FB, read the curatorial statement here) opened at the Science and Technology Museum in Accra at the end of June. If you did not yet see it yet, you only have until Friday 1 September to do so. 

The magnificent show where young artists both from KNUST and the professional fold in Ghana treat the order and disorder in our society, spans installations, video, cartoons, photography, textile and new techniques I cannot even describe. The show makes you happy, sad, marvel and it is miraculously free!

The show closes in grand style with a talk by the grandfather of Ghanaian art, Prof. Ablade Glover at 4 pm on September 1st, 2017.

UPDATE: Meet-the-Artist Series featuring Adwoa Amoah, Ato Annan, Francis Kokoroko and Shimawuda Ziorkley, in collaboration with Foundation For Contemporary Art,Ghana (FCA-Ghana) and @thestudioaccra

Date: Wednesday, 30th August, 2017 
Time: 4pm
Venue: Museum of Science & Technology, Barnes Road, Accra
Rate: Free

The event will be broadcast live via Facebook

After that, it is over! Take your chance!

See my slideshow with a small selection of the works on display from my visit at the Orderly/Disorderly art show with my kids.

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Ghana, Places

Chale Wote 2017 is Finally Here: #WataMata

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Yaaaaay! Chale Wote Street Art Festival is here again! This year an array of Artist Labs are followed by a weekend of public street madness in Jamestown, Accra, Ghana.

The full program (PDF) that this year has the theme of “Wata Mata” (Water matters? Word play with “Mami Wata” the female deity of the sea) is totally overwhelming and massively impressive, but I am especially looking forward to…

Sat 19 August, 2017

  • Dzala Butiq Art Sale
  • The Accra Cookout international food court
  • The Mami Wata Procession

Sun 20, August, 2017

  • April Bey’s workshop on printing
  • Deo Gratias Photo Studio Open House
  • The Wata Mata Procession
  • High Life Cafe Stage program with Ria Boss and Wanlov

 

Perhaps most I am excited about the overall creative environment with surprises around every corner.

Looking forward to sharing it with you on social media – hashtags #ChaleWote2017 and #WataMata.

See you there!

 

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Ghana, Political, Promoting, Social Media

7 Facebook Profiles to Follow on Sociopolitical Issues in Ghana

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Sometimes I despair: the problems are too many, the poverty too jarring, the madness to intense, the attitude among the leaders appalling, truly everywhere I turn, I see costly mistakes.

Then I turn to these seven Ghanaian opinion leaders asking the right questions. Because we need to ask questions, we need to keep the pressure up, we need to not despair.

Here are my top seven Facebook profiles to follow on sociopolitical issues in Ghana.

  1. Golda Addo 
  2. Bright Simons 
  3. Ethel D. Cofie (see her this week on #EthelCofieStartupSchool!)
  4. Franklin Cudjoe 
  5. Jemila Wumpini Abdulai (Meet her at #Cirqmixer, July 22)
  6. Kwame Gyan 
  7. Kathleen Addy

Chin up, follow them today!

Illustration borrowed from here.

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