Verah Okeyo – DDRN

Podcast: Personal, Pragmatic, Practical: Conversation on Unequal North-South Research Relations

Verah Okeyo — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 16:26:57 +0000

Unequally Yoked: From denying visas to the Global South researchers to travel to not crediting them for research they worked on, the discussion about unequal North-South research relationships continues to rage on. Researchers in the Global South do not want to complain anymore about how unfairly they are treated by their northern counterparts and confront the challenge head-on.

To continue this conversation, we have produced Unequally Yoked, a five-part podcast. Kenya’s journalist and communications specialist Verah Okeyo talks with Prof George Nyabuga from Kenya’s premier university, the University of Nairobi. Using his own experiences in a North-South research relationship, George candidly talks about the strategies researchers in the South can use to exploitation-proof themselves such as confronting the conditionalities that come with Northern funding which will make them subjects (as opposed to partners) to Northern leadership.

George starts by answering the question, “are these North-South research collaborations even necessary?”, moving to how researchers in the Global South protect themselves in these collaborations. In a rare display of boldness of civil servants, George talks about how the government’s negligible funding for research and development positions researchers in Kenya— and other Global South countries— at the mercy of their northern counterparts.

Verah Okeyo is a Nairobi-based journalist and communications specialist who tweets at @iamverahokeyo.

The interview - audio only

Articles previously on DDRN.dk about dimensions of South-North inequalities in research:

In The Neo-Colonialism in Development Studies, Namrata Acharya describes the fundamental inequality about access to scientific publication. Most “top journals” are based in the Global North, with editorial boards of these journals populated by academics based in the Global North. A self-reinforcing system of referencing develops, whereby most scholars refer only to work done in the Global North and seem completely unaware of work done elsewhere, even by research done in the country about which they write.

In the article International Graduates and their Struggles with the Job Hunt, Krishnanunni Mavinkal Ravindran interviews two other research graduates, from Mexico and Ethiopia respectively, to explain about his own and their aspirations coming to Denmark for higher education and then having to live on precarious working conditions, e.g. as a self-employed courier partner with Wolt, a food delivery company in Denmark.

The interview with Maria Eriksson-Baaz, professor at Uppsala University, Sweden, pinpoints the particular partnership between the “facilitating researcher” pejoratively named research assistant or even fixer, who is based in the research setting, performs research tasks and regulates the access and flow of knowledge, and the “contracting researcher”. Maria Eriksson-Baaz advocates a reformulation of development studies to focus on the development industry, not least into the consequences of its increasing marketization.

The interview with Julia Suárez-Krabbe, associate professor at Roskilde University, argues that partnership with the Global South must start by learning more about the discussions among South intellectuals historically and today. Julia Suárez-Krabbe says this should not happen through a North framework of understanding, rather we have to take seriously the framework within which people theorize, analyse and act.

The unequal research partnerships remain, as acknowledged by Iben Nathan, associate professor at University of Copenhagen: “Even with the best intentions, it is still researchers in the North who have the last say in determining topics and formulating research projects, which most often are in and about the South.” Iben Nathan suggests “we could be more open to the idea of funding projects with South partners coming to study the North – as well as projects where the two sides are studying each other, or where the partners together study global links and dependencies.”

“You feel that you are contributing to a build-up of capacity. But then, it’s quite a shame to see that this achievement very often is eroded shortly after the clever ones receive their Ph.D. degree when they are leaving research to become university administrators and managers”, observes Niels Fold, professor at University of Copenhagen. Also, the emphasis on transferring skills for certain technical solutions put the professionalism of social science researchers on the defensive.

Lars Buur, associate professor at Roskilde University, recognizes the adverse impact of unequal research partnerships: “What often happens with South driven projects, is that North partners write the application, which is then submitted on behalf of the South partners, who formally manage the research grant. But the real capacity is somewhere else. A change of power relations to allow research questions to be defined in the South will only happen, when local governments provide funding for research in the South with the partners South institutions want to work with.”

Karuti Kanyinga, who is professor at University of Nairobi, has monitored the impact of inequality in North-South academic collaborations. He suggests that the Global South acknowledges the crisis that makes it vulnerable to exploitation. And he encourages scientists to agitate for funding for research and development activities from their governments, and not be overly dependent on the North.

From a Danish perspective, Christian Friis Bach, who is a former Minister for Development Cooperation, proposes that this position is dropped altogether. Rather, all government ministries and their expertise need to be involved, as development cooperation is given a much higher priority. As an example, the Minister of Health would make sure that health is considered in a global context, and the Minister of Education would be responsible for children going to school in Africa. Jointly with the Nordic countries, we should build welfare societies by channelling substantial development aid into what then could be named a global compensation mechanism.”

During a roundtable at SWEDEV 2021, Maria Eriksson-Baaz, professor at Uppsala University, Sweden, mentioned that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) departs from any form of spatial distinction, and that the challenge of climate change puts considerable emphasis of the Global North and its elite populations. Both trends contradict development studies as they used to be. Thus, “we need to try to integrate these issues within the normal disciplines. In response to the fear of what would happen to area studies, Maria Eriksson-Baaz said: “We need to take the fight, integrate these issues into the disciplines”.

How Can the Global South Confront the Unequal North-South Academic Collaborations?

Verah Okeyo — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 08:35:00 +0000

In May 2022, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) published the policy brief ‘Decolonising Academic Collaboration: South-North Perspectives’. Earlier, researchers from Kenya, Ghana and Denmark, working together in three multi-year collaborative research programs, had met to discuss the inequality inherent in their collaborations. Professor Karuti Kanyinga, University of Nairobi, Kenya, is one of the participating researchers. He advises the Global South to respond to the unequal North-South academic partnerships instead of reacting; he also asks the North to change its attitude.

In June 2022, Professor Madhu Pai, Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health, McGill University, Canada, and Associate Director of the McGill International TB Centre, tweeted his article ‘Passport And Visa Privileges In Global Health’ about the privilege researchers in the North have when they want to travel.

He wrote: “Right now, triple-vaccinated people in the Global North have declared the pandemic over and are rushing to travel everywhere with an ‘urgency of normal,’ and organizing more and more in-person meetings and courses. While they can travel at short notice and not worry about visas for entering a large number of countries, the reality is vastly different for people in the Global South.”

The tweet has since garnered more than 700 reposts and kept the conversation about the North-South relationships in research and academia alive. Movement, or lack thereof for academics in the global south, is one of the characteristics of the inequalities in the North-South academic collaboration. The pandemic also showed this power imbalance as the Global North—which accounts for under 15 per cent of the world’s population – secured half of all COVID-19 vaccine doses and denied visas to people not vaccinated. From the hallways of ivy league universities to the social media public sphere, academics are chronicling evidence of the existence of inequality in the North-South academic collaboration.

Open conversation, a start

In an interview with DDRN.dk, Karuti Kanyinga, Associate Research Professor, Institute for Development Studies (IDS), University of Nairobi, Kenya, wants more than to describe the impact of inequality. He apportions some responsibility on researchers and governments from the Global South. He calls them to have an open conversation about the entrenched geometry of power and authority and describes the current talks as “disconnected and vicious.”

He said: “Organisations that are Panafrican in nature must pick it up, put it on the table and let people talk about their experiences, to admit there is a need for collective voice and collective action, create a space for discussion almost immediately, and avoid disconnected talks.”

Prof Kanyinga said that he met young researchers at a conference early this year who declared that they would not cite the work of any academic working with an American organisation, regardless of the stellar quality of the work.

Refusing to cite academics’ work because of the country they got their funding from is irrational, Prof Kanyinga said. Still, the North’s “colonial attitude towards the Global South” and the academic environment in Africa create a fertile ground for that kind of resentment to thrive.

Continued dependency

The African environment is where governments allocate little to no funding for research and higher education. Sub-Saharan Africa allocates 0.4 per cent of its GDP to research and development activities, according to 2020 UNESCO data. The dismal funding has led to continued dependency on the west for funding.

For example, nearly half of Kenya’s research funding comes from abroad. It is not better in Mozambique (78 per cent), Uganda (57 per cent), Tanzania (42 per cent) and Senegal (41 per cent).

Sometimes, the disdain for the North hurts young researchers in the Global South more than it would the older ones. Young researchers who get their PhDs from universities in the west come home to hostile colleagues who view them as privileged brats who took a shorter time to acquire the qualifications their local counterparts struggled to get.

The overreliance on donor funding leaves researchers in the Global South vulnerable to funding cuts. For example, the 2020 funding cuts in the UK slashed the aid budget to 0.5 per cent of gross national income, affecting some research in Africa and other countries in the Global South.

In an interview with DDRN.dk, George Nyabuga, Senior Lecturer, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Nairobi, said that the shrinking funding for research in the Global North leaves little resources that researchers from both the North and the South have to compete for. As a result, the funding bodies will structure and value project outcomes and impacts according to their parameters.

“The North will also prioritise their researchers and universities and have little regard for what might be important to the global south,” Prof Nyabuga added.

There is evidence of this favouritism. For example, five researchers analysed a database comprising USD 1.51 trillion in research grants for climate change from 1990 to 2020. They found that Africa received less than 4 per cent of the funding to research topics relevant to the continent for climate change.

Reject “Saviourism”

Samuel Oji Oti, Senior Program Specialist, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and Jabulani Ncayiyana, Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing and Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal advise academics and practitioners in Global Health to reject ‘saviourism’. They ask them to refuse to “participate in partnerships that do not give equal opportunity and reward to partners from Lower and middle-income countries (LMICs). If it only were that black and white for academics in the Global South: they argue there is little room to take the moral high ground when senior researchers “need to bring in money to continue to pay the salaries of team members.”

Little domestic funding for African research and higher education has direct and perceived implications. Dr Nyabuga stated that the quality of research from underfunded research institutions remains questionable, making it difficult for the researchers to compete for the limited funding available. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that Africa produces less than 1% of global research output. Sub-Saharan Africa also records the lowest research output globally.

Yet, there is a lot that the North can learn from the Global South. Prof. Kanyinga said: “The Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa has an outstanding experience in responding to pandemics after years of dealing with Ebola; the North could have consulted their scientists on how to respond to COVID-19, another viral disease.”

Eurocentric canon of knowledge

Even in areas of excellence, such as response to pandemics, the Global South also participates in the disregard of its excellence, constantly working towards achieving “international standards”. Dr Kumari Beck, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada, said academics in the South and North should acknowledge colonialism in their backyards. She said that colonialism is at the centre of “academic imperialism”. Dr Beck explained that academics in the Global South work towards the international ideal because of their belief that “the West is the best.” That belief, Prof. Achille Mbembe University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, said, is a “Eurocentric canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production.”

“It is a canon that tries to portray colonialism as a normal form of social relations between human beings rather than a system of exploitation and oppression,” Prof. Mbembe wrote.

Dr Beck calls for self-awareness of the influence of colonialism in higher education for academics in the North and South. When they are aware, they will know how colonialism affects academics’ view of the research questions, the set of assumptions about how the world is from the colonial lenses and how people can only access that world through particular methods. With this awareness, researchers in the Global South will discuss roles and responsibilities at the beginning of the research. In return, the North should come with the intent to listen and learn, not impose their ideologies, and direct.

Academics in the Global South see the unequal North-South academic collaborations as a legacy of colonialism, especially in areas such as Global Health. Making and Unmaking Public Health in Africa Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives, edited by Ruth J. Prince and Rebecca Marsland, talks about how the church and the colonial authorities married educational, political and healing systems, making them ‘intimately tied to a repressive, coercive and violent system of power and knowledge’. The education that the missionaries offered the Global South was meant to prepare the students to be efficient workers in factories, school or hospitals for the benefit of European economic investments. The colonialists bastardised indigenous education systems with false narratives about western moral and intellectual superiority. This cultivated the “saviour mentality” that justified, rationalised the colonial presence in the Global South. Years after the end of colonialism, the perception of the superiority of western knowledge persists, further commodifying knowledge and its production, as the Global South still looks to the North for funding.

The Global South has expressed discontent and requested their colleagues and funders from the Global North for mutuality. Seeing no more than declarations, researchers in the Global South are devising strategies they can apply to confront the inequality. Dr Kumari Beck, from the Simon Fraser University, asks Global South academics to acknowledge how they have internalised the colonially influenced mindset that pushes them to work towards adopting “international standards” to get the funding from the North.

Prof. Karuti Kanyinga, University of Nairobi, has monitored the impact of inequality in North-South academic collaborations. He suggests that the Global South acknowledges the crisis that makes it vulnerable to exploitation. Prof. Kanyinga encourages scientists to agitate for funding for research and development activities from their governments, and not be overly dependent on the North.

Verah Okeyo is a Nairobi-based journalist and communications specialist who tweets at @iamverahokeyo.

July 8, 2016: Global academic collaboration: a new form of colonisation?

July 29, 2018: Global South scholars are missing from European and US journals. What can be done about it?

July 16, 2020: International research collaborations: how can we shift the power towards Africa?

COVID-19’s extra torture on Kenya’s elderly

Verah Okeyo — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 15:17:58 +0000

In the thick trees on the outskirts of Kisumu City in Kenya, a hut is as isolated as the 76-year-old woman who owns and lives in it alone. Without a child of her own, Mary Atieno had called people “son” or “daughter” from the community she had built in church, a religious camaraderie that COVID-19 halted abruptly.

The neat arrangement of the hut, not more than three adult’s steps wide, shows how “self-contained” Mary’s life has been: at the corner of the house is a traditional three-stone stove where she prepares her meals, and close to it are a few plastic cups and plates; on the furthest end, is a papyrus reed that serves as a bed, with a small torn blanket. To an outsider, Mary could use some help on the materials needs to cater for some comfort and food; those are furthest from her concern.

“I have not been able to go to church since the government banned gatherings to control the spread of that disease, and I am extremely sad,” said Mary.

“That disease”, is COVID-19 and it hit people like Mary much more than any other due to medical and social challenges. According to the World Health Organization, most people infected with the coronavirus experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without special treatment. However, WHO states that older people over 60 [PDF] are more likely to develop serious illnesses. Kenya’s Director General at the Ministry of Health, Dr Patrick Amoth, said that older people are particularly vulnerable to severe COVID-19 due to underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Childless, widowed and without a social support system, Mary’s sadness from not going to the church goes beyond her inability to see her friends and stay in touch with her community at the church.

Extreme hunger

She talks of a “sister” at the church, a congregant who would carry food supplies like cornflour, sugar, and vegetables. While she did not demand it, Mary had become dependent on this generosity, and now that it is not coming, she has to make arrangements.

“I will try farm for people and get some income,” she said.

Farming, a tasking activity, is what Mary says she can think of, as she is not “used to disturbing people.”

During her conversation with Danish Development Research Network (DDRN), Mary said she is coaching her body” that she will eat only once a day when the food is available. Cutting the number of times she eats is a coping mechanism for many older people, according to a Rapid Needs Assessment (RNA) [PDF] that nonprofit HelpAge International conducted in 2020. According to the survey, nearly four out of five (76 per cent) of older people reported reducing the quantity of food eaten since the outbreak, while more than half (52 per cent) have had to reduce the quality of food eaten.

It is hardly surprising that most of the older people (57 per cent) interviewed in the survey recorded food as their biggest concern, followed by livelihood (14 per cent) and shelter, at 11 per cent. When Human Rights Watch interviewed residents in Nairobi, the majority reported COVID-19 related lockdowns led to extreme hunger and job losses.

In its report, Human Rights Watch notes a 75-year old grandmother in the Kenyan city who cares for grandchildren with mental health conditions who faced difficulties in finding medication and food.

“When the lockdown came, my small-scale detergents sales business became difficult,” she said. “I was not able to continue buying medication. I was borrowing food, begging, and buying food items on credit.”

Depressive Symptoms

The devastation that COVID meted on the economies of many African countries compounds the material lack. Economists at World Bank forecast that nearly half a 4 billion people in Africa will live in extreme poverty by the end of 2021. Data is scant on what percentage of people over 60 with any form of pension, but generally, older people rely on remittances for their income. The younger people, such as the kind woman who gave Mary groceries, lost their income due to COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, the World Bank termed unemployment in Kenya as the highest in East Africa.

Mary does not know this gloom and dread, but she knows that she is not getting the help to provide her with the most basic needs, such as food. Even her peers who have families have also faced more abuse during the pandemic. The WHO reports that around 1 in 6 people 60 years and older experienced abuse in community settings in 2020. The abuse was mainly psychological (12 per cent) and financial (7 per cent).

So in her hut, she worries—a lot. The full extent of the effects of this pandemic is still unknown. Still, studies in places like China have already reported increased anxiety and depression in the general population. Even outside of crisis times, the elderly population have relatively high rates of depressive symptoms. The Covid-19 pandemic has stripped older adults like Mary of human contact, meaningful activity and purpose. Younger people have found a way to navigate the uncertainties of life.

Raising the alarm

Still, Mary can neither afford the technology – such as a smartphone— nor know how to use platforms such as Zoom or WhatsApp to maintain contact with people.

Kenya, like many African countries, tried to offer some form of social welfare. In 2020, the government paid 4,000 Kenyan shillings (About US$37) every two months to more than 1.1 million people through an existing cash transfer program. In addition, it initiated a new, pandemic-specific cash transfer program that paid beneficiaries 1,000 Kenyan shillings ($9) per week and reached 332,563 beneficiaries from April to November 2020, according to government figures. Noble as it was, only a handful of people got this help as corruption marred its implementation.

Organisations are raising alarm that the typical approach to the pandemic is medicine and public health, which has contained the virus, alright. However, the approach has also caused older people to suffer and die by eroding their physical and mental health. HelpAge International said: “Governments and the international community cannot justify the continued neglect of older people. We need to see them take action and ensure that we build forward better to include older people in response plans and data collection to build resilience for the future and uphold their rights. We must all have equal opportunity to recover.”

In a statement sent to DDRN, Human Rights Watch urged international financial institutions and bilateral donors to “significantly increase the financial support and technical assistance available for expanding social protection in Africa.”

Verah Okeyo is a global health journalist and communications specialist based in Kenya. She tweets on @iamverahokeyo

Also read: “Up here, it is as if the pandemic did not exist” and Older people in Denmark were mostly worried about other people getting infected with COVID-19

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DDRN South-North dialogue webinar:
The impact of Covid-19 on the elderly
Time: Monday 17 January 2022,10:00 am (GMT+1)
Presenters: Verah Okeyo, Kenya; Andrés Yépez, Ecuador and NGO Globale Seniorer, Denmark. Place: Online (Zoom), Register by e-mail: info@ddrn.dk

Photo: Doreen Ajiambo

Two years later, families in Kenya’s informal settlements are still food insecure

Verah Okeyo — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 13:24:21 +0000

The scorching sun is unforgivingly baking the ground in Korogocho slums in Nairobi with the same intensity that pangs of hunger are hitting the bellies of Joyce Khamala and her three children. To this family, lack of food is a rodeo that they are used to riding, but not as brutally as it has been since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. The thirty-three-year-old mother of three says that she and her children have faced all the pain that COVID-19 could inflict on anyone: death, stigma and material need.

“My husband died of COVID-19, and he was the sole breadwinner,” said Joyce.

Apart from the lack that accompanied the death of the family’s sole provider, Joyce’s in-laws believe she bewitched her husband and cut all the support to her and her children.

She said: “We go for days without food and live by the grace of God and well-wishers.”

Joyce and her children are one of the families in Kenya’s informal settlements. According to the United Nations body concerned with human settlement and urban development, UN-Habitat, there are more than 500 slums in Kenya including the largest in the continent. The slums occupy only 5 per cent [PDF] of the total residential area in the capital city of Nairobi but house more than 4 million people, 65 per cent of the city’s population. Yet, despite the large population, people living in slums are historically marginalised in government economic and health policies. This omission exposed them to more severe consequences in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The pandemic could not have come at a worse time. Kenya’s poor storage of its grains has led to losses due to contamination by Aflatoxin, toxic and deadly chemicals produced by a fungus called Aspergillus flavus. For instance, the country destroyed 13,992 [pdf] metric tonnes of aflatoxin-contaminated maize in 2014, a challenge that was reported in pockets of the country throughout 2019 to 2020. Additionally, the country recorded deficient agricultural produce due to protracted drought, floods and a locust invasion. Consequently, Kenya’s food inflation had risen between March and April 2020 to 12 per cent, hitting a three year high according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

Joyce could not work her way out of this need. Like many women in the slums, she relies on casual labour such as washing clothes and cleaning homes for other homes. On a good day, she said, she earns about Sh200 (about US2$), barely enough money to buy a meal for her and the children. With the lockdowns and the fear of the pandemic, the homes that would provide her these opportunities shut their doors.

Before the pandemic, Joyce said that the cost of two kilogrammes of cornflour had already risen to Sh100 (approximately US1$). In May 2020, the cost of the same flour rose to Sh130 (nearly equivalent to US1.30$), a rise in prices with an instant negative effect. In July 2020, humanitarian organisation Kenya Red Cross and Concern Worldwide conducted a food security assessment[PDF] and found out that less than one per cent (0.9%) of the households were food secure. More than half (55%) were on the brink of starvation. Little has changed in August 2021 as the prices of food and nonalcoholic beverages continue to rise more than any other commodity in Kenya, according to KNBS. Expectedly, the lack of food has stopped many children, including Joyce’s, from going to school.

The pandemic exacerbated a chronic and acute shortage of food driven by, among many other factors, the government’s neglect of the people living in the informal settlements. In April 2020, the president announced tax relief to cushion the economy from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, in a move that shocked the public, members of parliament in Kenya voted to end the tax cuts in December 2020, hurting an already economically challenged population.

The challenge has continued, even throughout 2019 to 2020. The country recorded deficient agricultural produce due to protracted drought, floods and a locust invasion. Consequently, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) reported that Kenya’s food inflation had risen between March and April 2020 to 12 per cent, hitting a three year high.

Like many women in the slums, Joyce relies on casual labour such as washing clothes manually and cleaning homes. On a good day, she said, she earns about Sh200 (about US2$), barely enough money to buy a meal for her and the children. Before the pandemic, Joyce said that the cost of two kilogrammes of cornflour had already risen to Sh100 (approximately US1$).

In May 2020, the cost of the same flour rose to Sh130 (nearly equivalent to US1.30$), a rise in prices with an instant negative effect. In July 2020, humanitarian organisations Kenya Red Cross and Concern Worldwide conducted a food security assessment[PDF] and found out that less than one per cent (0.9%) of the households were food secure. More than half (55%) were on the brink of starvation.

According to the national statistics, little has changed in August 2021 as the prices of food and nonalcoholic beverages continue to rise more than any other commodity in Kenya. Expectedly, the lack of food has stopped many children, including Joyce’s, from going to school.

More than a third of Kenyans –about 36.1 per cent, which is 17.1 million people – live below the international poverty line, a measure of extreme poverty defined as earning less than $1.90 a day, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. The World Bank reported that as of 2015, one in every two Kenyans were living in multidimensional poverty, a measure that uses a weighted index of ten factors related to education, health, standards of living and education.

Citizens like Joyce fall in both categories of poverty and desperately need their governments. Therefore, it was a relief when Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta announced on May 23, 2020, that the government would run a national cash transfer program aimed at reaching 669,000 households that the most vulnerable citizens.

Charles Lukania, a community social worker in Korogocho, would identify the families who would receive KSh1,000 (about US9$) in 35 weekly stipends for eight months. Charles said that it was a hard choice to pick from people who have faced neglect.

Lukania said: “Slum residents, already grossly affected by chronic poverty, are highly vulnerable to different forms of shock, including those arising from political instability.”

Joyce and many families missed out on the cash transfer. Instead, politicians and government officials enrolled their friends and families, according to a damning report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“Some people committed suicide when they failed to provide for their families,” said social worker Lukania.

Amidst the gloom and dread, there are some organisations that provided cash transfers to cushion households from starvation during the pandemic successfully such as Action Against Hunger every month to families in arid and semi-arid counties in Kenya such as Isiolo.

Verah Okeyo is a global health journalist and communications specialists based in Kenya

Also read: The fresh food in this outdoor fridge is for everyone who need it and “Ollas Comunes” in Chile in times of the “new normal”

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Live webinar: The impact of Covid-19 on food provision

Time: Thursday 18 November 2021,12:30 am (GMT+1)
Presenters: Verah Okeyo, Kenya; Marta Apablaza, Chile and Irene Valentina di Lauro, Denmark.

Place: Online (Zoom), Register by e-mail: info@ddrn.dk

Joyce Kamala, a mother of three who lives in Korogocho slums in Nairobi, in her casual job. PHOTO / Anne Macharia

“Public engagement”: New role for researchers in Kenya?

Verah Okeyo — Fri, 01 May 2020 17:36:38 +0000

Some of Kenya’s most celebrated scientists and researchers congregated in a hotel in Nairobi, to celebrate the world anti-microbial week. Apart from the jaw breaking scientific recommendations that came at the end of the two-day event to research more on taming the abuse of drugs, was scientists needed to interact more with the public. The relationship between them and the public, they said, is distant due to several roles. The public has a perception that scientific research and the outcomes of it are produced and discussed in a ‘closed shop’, without their involvement while scientists assert that they are not heard and their expertise not engaged [1]. Scientists feel their subject often are on the “fringes on the media” [2]. With journalists, the engagement is often described as “distant” [3], “gap” [4] or “love hate” and other metaphorical terms.

However, the name they prefer to use in this deviation from their ivory towers is not “communication”. It is public engagement.

Kenyan scientists are becoming active in bridging this gap by communicating their research in community camps and the media. However, the name they prefer to use in this deviation from their ivory towers is not “communication”. It is public engagement. This essay involved interviewing scientists and people employed by research institutions to carry out the engagement, interviews that were analysed thematically.

Public engagement is “any scientific communication that engages an audience outside of academia” [5]. It is a more inclusive term with a general need to take science out of the labs to non-scientific audiences. “Scientific communication” on the other hand is using “appropriate skills, media, activities and dialogue to produce one or more of the following personal responses to science: awareness, enjoyment, interest, opinion-forming and understanding” [6]. Science communications occurs in any of these three spaces: science museums, and other centers that embody the encyclopaedic spirit of the research community and often targeting to rally the public to support scientific research; the media, public forums, lectures and conferences. A conversation with seven researchers in Kenya, and two experts in public engagement revealed a general willingness to engage the public, through the media and other non-academic communities and the media. Be that as it may, they also expressed fears that have held them back from fully engaging the platforms that would make science more accessible to anyone without that industry.

This noble endeavour has a history. It has been years of evangelicals calls for scientists to help bridge this gap by popularizing science and one of the most acknowledged calls was the 1995 statement by British astronomer Sir Arnold Wolfendale— hence the name Wolfendale Committee (1995) — who stated that that scientists receiving public funding for their research have a duty to communicate their work to the public. This, and many other declarations, formed the British public engagement with science, and which trickled to the developing countries that they fund such as Kenya. United Kingdom hosts one of Kenya’s greatest science funders— the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Welcome Trust— and with evidence that the East African region gobbles most of the research funding, they do ask the Kenyan scientists that they fund how much money they will spend in public engagement. They also avail several public engagement grants to the researcher they fund.

Planned Behaviour theory

One of the scientists that have undergone this journey is Joseph Othieno, a veterinary surgeon and now a PhD in science communication. Immediately after graduating from veterinary school, Dr Othieno was posted to work among the Maasai, a pastoral community in arid and semi-arid Kenya. The Maasai community’s source of income is majorly livestock, and he wanted to teach them “low cost high impact” ways to battle diseases such as Mastitis, foot and mouth among others.

He told DDRN: “It was so difficult…I had the information, but I was unable to share this knowledge with them”.

Eventually, Dr Othieno enrolled for a postgraduate course in communications and ended up being taking a PhD on it. Like six of his colleagues interviewed by DDRN, Dr Othieno’s motivation to engage with non-scientific audience was to share knowledge. This willingness points to one of the three reasons that (de)motivates researchers to communicate to participate in public engagement as laid out in the Planned Behavior theory explained by Ajzen. Icek Ajzen, a social psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, writes of the planned behaviour theory:

“In simple terms intentions to perform behaviours of different kinds can be predicted with high accuracy from attitudes toward the behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control, and these intentions, together with perceptions of behavioural control, account for considerable variance in actual behaviour”

In this theory, the intentions are measured by endorsement (“tomorrow I will do ABC”) and strength of that endorsement (“I cannot fail to do ABC”). Using the theory, Ellen Poliakoff and her colleagues analysed interviews from scientists and researchers and the results published in her paper showed that scientists appreciated the importance of public engagement, especially in the media. Her paper was one of the few that went beyond the cliché “there was a gap between scientists, research and the public” and asked why this perceived gap existed.

In the paper, scientists listed the reasons why they should be on the media: science and research is core of many society’s needs such as health, food security and all; there is a difference in the way science and scientists are presented in the media and those that are popularizing science, and scientists should come right those wrongs; scientists are a group of special people from whose knowledge the public can benefit, and make people change their minds.

The attitude in the scientists makes them question “is this engagement a good or a bad thing?” Dr Othieno’s answer to it was a “Yes”, and therefore he went to participate in the exercise. Another researcher who works with a lab that conducts genomic studies on strains on corn in Kenya felt his work is important given the impending food security in Kenya felt his study would help small scale farmers. Younger scientists said that the exposure in the media would be beneficial for his career. He said:

“These days you get appointed to these commissions by how much buzz in the media, and how much you trend in the media, so I will take all the chances I get to be on the media”

Other scientists’ attitude was not as welcoming, reinforcing the perception that regimentation and training in research leaves scientists shy of self-effacing tendencies. They are, as one blogger writes, “trained in the scientific method, and weary of having their research misrepresented, post-graduate researchers collectively appreciate the importance of suspending impulsive thoughts, weighing evidence, and tolerating the uncertainties surrounding “truth.”. One said that he did not have the skills to participate in the debates in public or in the media. This hesitancy came from a prior experience. He stated, as a matter of fact: “I am comfortable doing my job in the research and let the others worry about the rest because I have horrible memories of how one journalist screwed me over by misrepresenting my work”

“Saganized”

This is like behavioural control, another reason that stops or encourages scientists and researchers to participate in public engagement. They said that they do not know what journalists will do with their work and they have no control over that interaction.

And lastly, subjective norms, where the researchers said they are afraid for their reputation “dragged in the mad” and losing respect among their peers. The media, one said, “was not an adequate spot for a proper discussion”. This fear does not come from a vacuum. Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan was hosting a popular television series Cosmos, and this led to him not being admitted to the National Academy of sciences, which most scientists consider the mark of success in their careers: being recognized by your peers. They are afraid to be “saganized”, despised in their circles for their love of attention and being celebrity.

In trying to maintain control of the communication, scientists have one mode of communication. All the scientists and researchers who talked to DDRN considered themselves as a source of knowledge that people needed, and that it was complex and they needed to “break it down that my grandmother in the village will know”. The scientists perceived the public as “other”, and this included even other researchers from other fields that are not considered “sciency” such as those from social science. For this reason, they needed to “educate” the other, because they were not their peers.

The scientists perceived the public as “other”, and this included even other researchers from other fields that are not considered “sciency” such as those from social science. For this reason, they needed to “educate” the other, because they were not their peers.

This perception that there was a knowledge gap that needed to be filled in the public has persuaded the model of communication in the engagements that scientists used to communicate. It has been the traditional methods that seek to cure some deficiency in knowledge in the public or increase the knowledge or “focused on increasing scientific literacy and public understanding of science”. These are “push methods” where the scientist just wants to dump the knowledge on the scientist, styles that have been criticized as “too narrow—among other critiques— to fully cover the complexities of modern scientific debates.

Joy Owango, the director of the Training Centre in Communication at the University of Nairobi has trained more than 3,000 researchers in public engagement, ranging from writing op-eds, how to act in interviews and conversations in communities. Joy wants scientists to appreciate ‘non-traditional’’ models that just doesn’t transmit scientific knowledge but try two-way communication. “Scientists always are for the idea that journalists that should be taught to know how to report on science, and yet there are more scientists that journalists and they should know how to engage in that space with non-scientific audiences”

Also present was Lillian Mutengu, who is a former journalist and now the community and public engagement manager in African Academy of Sciences. AAS, a pan African organization that supports more than 3,000 scientists in the continent manages and founds programmes that encourages the embrace of both traditional and non-traditional methods of engaging.

This article engaged seven researchers and two public engagement experts on an unscripted conversation about public engagement. These chats revealed that while scientists and researchers express a desire to engage the public, they are held a back or motivated by three things as explained in the planned behaviour theory: Attitude on whether the engagement would be good or not; subjective norm where they worry about what their colleagues would think and; perceived control on whether they had control of the engagement out of science or not. Those that chose to participate, however, always used the traditional methods of communication that are push where they felt that there was a need to educate the public. There has been an increase in engagement with the public but for it to succeed there is need for building the capacity of scientists to use non-traditional methods of delivery as well.

Verah Okeyo is a global health reporter from Kenya. Reach her on verah.okeyo@alumni.lse.ac.uk

Joseph Othieno

Joy Owango

Training session at University of Nairobi

Works cited

[1]. Claessens, M. (2018). Research institutions: neither doing science communication nor promoting ‘public’ relations. Journal of Science Communication, 13(03). https://doi.org/10.22323/2.13030303

[2]. Owuor, O. (2008). The Challenges of Communicating Science: A Journalist’s Perspective. Nairobi.

[3]. Peters, H. P. (2013). Gap between science and media revisited: Scientists as public communicators. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(SUPPL. 3), 14102–14109. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1212745110

[4]. Amend, E., Capurro, G., & Secko, D. M. (2014). Grasping scientific news. Journalism Practice, 8(6), 789–808. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2013.868146

[5]. Burns, T., Connor, D. J., & Stocklmayer, S. M. (2003). Science communication: a contemporary definition. Public Understanding of Science, 12.

[6]. Poliakoff, E., & Webb, T. L. (2007). What factors predict scientists’ Intentions to participate in public engagement of science activities? Science Communication, 29(2), 242–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547007308009

Lillian Mutengu

Kenya: The troubles of a science PhD from the West

Verah Okeyo — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 14:24:51 +0000

Graduate students of the London School of Economics and Political Science gathered at Kenya’s coast in September 2018, where the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Dr Mukhisa Kituyi told them: “With your international credibility, it is easier and tempting to leave and take out of the continent the little intellectual resource that could solve problems their countries face.”

He was persuading them to come back home, to Africa, to ‘save the modern state from collapse’. Many PhD holders with African descent have taken Dr Kituyi’s message to heart, and returned to Africa, but according to interviews with fourteen returnees in biomedical sciences for this article, they have had a hard time adjusting to life at home.

The common theme from the returnees was the lack of funding for their work and inadequately equipped labs. When they managed to resolve the two, they had bureaucracy that is ingrained in the DNA of the institutions and the people they are expected to work with.

The World Bank estimates that unemployment for people with advanced education in Africa is as high a 20 per cent in some countries, and this is what returnees face when they land. Additionally, their return back home is compounded by other structural challenges such as bureaucracy, all these in context of a continent that have few researchers.

Kenyan Martin Rono, a PhD in cell and molecular biology from a joint Germany-France programme, anticipated a few challenges when he took his flight back home, where his knowledge about malaria – one of the country’s biggest public health problem — would be needed. That could not be further from the truth, first with the assumption that his return was a noble idea that would be praised.

Transferring the responsibility for development from the state to the individual

But this is planted in the graduate’s mind right from the start. In Kenya, like many other, Kenya’s colonial relationships sustain scholarships such as the Commonwealth Scholarships offered to former colonies of England, which often have a condition that the recipient of the scholarships need to return home after their studies to develop their countries. This assumption is rooted on neoliberalism, which transfers development from the responsibility of the state to individuals.

When returnees leave for their studies abroad, there is an overt expectation communicated to them through funding they receive to pursue their studies. For instance, the Commonwealth PhD scholarships for low and middle income countries limit applicants to six themes. Speaking at the launch of Kenya’s National Science and Research Strategy, Tom Ogada – the Chairman of the Kenyan National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI) – said that the problems in the continent have forced scientists to ask themselves very hard questions and “they cannot follow their passion, but solutions to their citizens’ issues”.

This leaves returnees in a pickle, but this is not a new thing in the north-south relations. Just like migrants send money back home, returnees are expected to return with ideas and innovation as well as a link between Africa and the influential and richer host institutions in the west.

In their 2013 paper Introduction: Agents of Change? Staging and Governing Diasporas and the African State[1], Simon Turner and Nauja Kleist argue that returnees are perceived to assume a double identity as being westernized in their thinking, but still African. This should be the perfect mix for them to act as “brokers” between the west and Africa.

This is where the antagonism when they come home originates. To the locals, the returnees come back to try applying what they learnt from the well-resourced western universities, much to the consternation of their local counterparts who interpret it as a communication of their inferiority and lack of civilization. This, Lisa Åkesson and Maria Eriksson Baaz [2] state, may lead to exposure, exclusion and, sometimes, even outright harassment and belittling.

The unpredicted challenges of hierarchy and bureaucracy

A returnee who researches HIV – who requested be anonymous – needed a lab, at Kenya’s oldest and most respected tertiary institution, the University of Nairobi. It took three months to gain access to the lab due to entrenched bureaucracies intermingled with politics and the pecking order in science.

“There is a hierarchy of a system, where you are told to ‘follow the channels, your time will come’ and that kind of talk, so I sat there waiting, and not even free to give ideas, lest I be seen as pretending to know more than my superiors” she waited.

Then the university told her there was no position in the organizational structure as a postdoc.

She lamented: “They said the Human Resource system only recognized lecturers who also researches, not an independent researcher who is working towards mastery of a specialized [field] without the responsibilities of teaching”

For three months, she wrote letters, attended meetings as guilt clawed at her soul for being paid by her Canadian funder that would support her work and have no work to show for it. It took a call from the funders, abroad, to allow her access to the lab.

Another returnee said he got into disciplinary issues for asking that two of his colleagues maintain correspondence in institutional emails whenever they were communicating with research collaborators. He was shooed down by “we have signed bigger deals in these personal Yahoo and Gmail emails that you are now belittling”.

In this case, as Prof Laura Hammond had studied about returnees in Somalia [3], the returnee was sometimes seen as the priviledged job stealer who took fewer years to get positions than the local-educated who took more than a decade to be promoted or professionally recognized.

Then there were those that were not lucky to get a position at all, and settled for some in areas they were not skilled in.

When Dr. Rono came back to Kenya in 2008, there were no jobs in his area of expertise— genomics in Malaria— and he accepted a position as a researcher in HIV.

“It was a short detour but also it was the job that was available at that time,” he said.

Dr Rono’s research is attempting to modify the makeup of mosquitoes in an effort to make them capable of spreading Malaria, a disease that kills at least 700 children under five in Africa, daily, and is responsible for more than a quarter of all children deaths.

The labs that are equipped to conduct this kind of research are few. Rono, now based at UK’s Wellcome Trust funded centre in Kenya’s coast, has little complaints about where he works but that has not protected him against bureaucracy in getting reagents. For the four years in France and Germany, Rono says he would order reagents for manipulating the DNA, and he would get them in hours or days because “the manufacturers were just around the corner”

When he came to Kenya, he had to import the reagents, and this would take days, further dampening his spirit.

He said: “The cost, the process of having the reagents cleared from customs can take months”.

Lack of PhDs in Africa

The frustration of returning to Africa with a PhD in sciences has persuaded many of the PhDs to remain in the western countries especially, when the challenges are also compounded by poor governance that in turn may affect the science handled in the countries.

Many PhDs have migrated, depleting an already not-so critical mass of PhDs, who is able to research and tutor in Africa, and with negative consequences on knowledge production: Africa only produces 1 per cent of the world’s research and mostly from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.

Tom Kariuki, PhD and Director of the pan African funding platform; Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) from the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), says that it does not help much that African governments are allocating very little money not only on the people who have had a PhD, but the entire process of getting a PhD: little monies from the national exchequer to the education of science from primary school to institutions of higher learning; little money to facilitate research; no state funding for well-equipped labs; poor pay for the PhDs.

“Most governments have a short-term goal, while even getting the PhD and creating an environment where the PhD can practice is a long-term investment,” he said.

The continent currently has 198 researchers per million people, a paltry ratio compared to as many as over 4,000 in the UK and US. Africa needs a million new PhDs to achieve the world average for the number of researchers per capita.

In an interview about unrelated matter, Faith Osier who is a Kenyan globally acclaimed malaria researcher, now based in Germany, said that she has found herself more useful to the partner lab in Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) while away. Dr Osier has been able to recruit PhDs to work alongside her as she mentors them.

She said: “While we can appreciate that African governments are trying to invest more money, but is it enough to conduct quality research, train, mentor, and for the scientist to lead a quality life or even take their children to school?”

There is no data to monitor the movement of PhDs out of the continent, but some literature has estimated the data as between 20,000 to 25,000 a year.

PhDs, like Osier, defy the neoliberal approach through which returnees are viewed: While the returnee may be part of a peoplehood — bound by some elements to their countries such as exercises of a democratic processes like voting or tribe — their movement in and out of their countries of origin are mostly personal, not some act of nationalism: they want proper pay, and other career advancing opportunities.

Institutions like the AAS and collaborations with funders have founded mentorships and programs such as Future Leaders African Independent Research (FLAIR) that grants about 150,000 GBP every year for a period of two years for returnees to conduct their own research.

Aside from the financial support, the programmes pair the young scientist with more experienced researchers who act as mentors.

Periodically, the cohorts meet physically where they are given courses to refresh on critical skills that would enable them to work efficiently in the developing world. These include writing grant proposals, managing the teams they hire for their research, community and public engagement.

Institutions such as Next Einstein Forum and Mawazo Institute offer support to PhDs and are going an extra mile to have initiatives that focus on women.

Dr Kariuki said he was surprised at the many post-doctoral applicants who applied for FLAIR and many other opportunities from the 11 consortiums he oversees.

“I was so surprised that they were all willing to come home,” Dr Kariuki said.

Staying away from Africa

Conversations with the returnees revealed several concerns at individual and institutional level. While acknowledging that some of the decisions they make are motivated by personal reasons, most of them lamented about the bureaucracies in the universities and research companies the former PhD students looked forward to coming back home to work for. The former PhD students often ended up being questioned about “letters whose purposes we do not comprehend”, delays in procuring reagents, and hierarchical decision making. Since some of the labs are the only ones of their kind in the entire country, with the equipment needed for their scientific work, they are left with little or no choice, but to endure the struggles.

The returnees also hinted at a gaping chasm between the needs of the country for researchers communicated to them when they get scholarships to study, and how they are treated when they try to meet that deficiency: “When going abroad to study, you are told to come back home because your set of skills is needed, and then when you land here, there are too many hurdles from the same institution, to allow you to practice”

The returnees have found strategies of coping with these challenges, such as staying in the countries from where they acquired their PhDs, and conducting research, partnering with a home institution while they are abroad.

Pan African organizations, such as the African Academy of Sciences, have recognized the struggle that the young scientists face, and responded by creating initiatives to offer finances and support for soft skills to enable them to navigate their circumstances such as proposal writing. However, only time will tell whether it will solve the challenges of the returnees.

Money and a deliberate adjustment of research institutions is needed

This article highlighted the struggles of young African researchers, especially in the biomedical field. There is a chronic shortage of PhDs in the continent to build a critical mass of researchers, and this is exacerbated by a poor state of the education system in the continent. Therefore, aspiring researchers have sought education abroad mostly through scholarships, in which one of the conditions is that they will come back home and contribute to alleviating the shortage of researchers. Many of the PhDs returned home to a bureaucratic system that makes it difficult for them to employ and use their skills. 14 PhDs who spoke to this writer cited bureaucracy as the biggest challenge, second to lack of funding. The PhDs have employed strategies to cope with this including remaining in the countries they trained in. Noting the researchers’ disillusionments, donor and pan African organisations have instituted fellowships such as FLAIR which not only gives the researchers money for their work but also mentorship. To make PhDs interested in coming back home, money and a deliberate adjustment of research institutions is needed.

Verah Vashti Okeyo is a Global Health Reporter with Nation Media Group and based in Nairobi, Kenya

[1] Turner, Simon, and Nauja. Kleist. 2013. “Introduction: Agents of Change? Staging and Governing Diasporas and the African State.” African Studies. 72 (2): 192–206.

[2] Åkesson, Lisa, and Maria Eriksson Baaz, eds. 2015. Africa’s Return Migrants: The New Developers? London; New York, N.Y.: Zed Books.

[3] Hammond, Laura (2011) “Obliged to Give: Remittances and the Maintenance of Transnational Networks Between Somalis at Home and Abroad,” Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies: Vol. 10, Article 11. Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/bildhaan/vol10/iss1/11

Photo: Mistaiyke, Wiki Commons

University in Nigeria, where the students are researching on the causes of possible ameliorating potentials of Kolaviron on Neurological degeneration, Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases.

Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship

In the terms and conditions for the Commonwealth scholarship in 2019, it was stated that more than 800 Commonwealth Scholarships are awarded to people across the globe in Commonwealth countries (previous colonies). The scholarships are awarded to low- or middle-income students, who will study full-time in the UK. The purpose of the scholarships is to “increase the institutional capacity in academic and other sectors in Commonwealth countries”, as well as create an international connection between the countries.

Likewise, in the Handbook for Commonwealth Scholars and Fellows for 2019, it is stated that the grantee of the scholarship, when accepting his or her award, commit to return to their home country after the end of the award.

Photo: AAS

H.E. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, former President of Mauritius, Fellow of the AAS, with the AAS Management team

African Academy of Sciences (AAS) – FLAIR grants

FLAIR grantees at a retreat. Photo: AAS

FLAIR research leaders

Researchers per pop. of 1 Mill. in FTE 2017

Source: UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics eAtlas of Research and Experimental Development
Researchers in FTE per 1 million population is the number of researchers (measured in full-time equivalence) in a national territory or region, expressed as a proportion of a population of 1 million in the national territory or region during a given year.