Stepping into postgraduate research training in Kenya

The process of founding Eider Africa, an African-led research mentorship organization in Kenya in 2016, has been thought-provoking, healing, occasionally perplexing, and inspirational. I stepped into research mentorship and training with caution, imposter syndrome, and a strong sense of belief, even as a female researcher in the early stages of my career as a master’s student. The main issue that motivated me to engage in this area was the numerous challenges post-graduate students face while working on their research projects. The post-graduate students I spoke with in meetings and informal conversations from 2015 onwards narrated their experiences of research project delays, with some spending eight years to complete a two-year master’s project due to multiple factors that will be discussed later in this paper. Some had supervisors who were either absent or unresponsive. Others could not apply what they had learned in their research methods courses to developing their research projects.

Some post-graduate students could not find an appropriate non-predatory journal to publish their work, while others could not access journal articles and important scholarly materials to further their research projects because most of these journals were behind the publisher’s paywall. Being self-sponsored students, most faced funding shortages that further delayed their studies. Their experiences are corroborated by various studies extensively documenting similar challenges (Mukhwana et al., 2016; Mbogo et al., 2020; Mugendi & Githae, 2021; Motseke, 2020; Desmennu & Owoaje, 2018).

As I began to think more deeply about how to contribute to responsive postgraduate research training, I started to explore and access the situated accounts of different stakeholders in the university and the research training ecosystem actors in general. Two main questions guided me: i) How have postgraduate research training challenges been explained and resolved previously in Kenya and Africa? ii) How can we understand these problems better to identify the root drivers and foster a way forward?

Research on postgraduate research training: gaps and opportunities

Several studies conducted on postgraduate education and research training in Kenya focused on what I would call symptoms of the problem. For example, a large study conducted on the status of postgraduate research and training in Kenya, in its conceptualizing the problem and the recommendations, located postgraduate challenges within the existing institutional arrangements without questioning how these institutions and systems are created and maintained (Mukhwana et al., 2016). For example, the study proposes more policies, robust codes of conduct, supervision, and improved management strategies, which is essential. However, as ‘systems of established and embedded social rules/ norms that structure social interactions’ (Hodgson, 2006), institutions and the social rules and norms embedded in them structure interactions and actions of universities, post-graduate students, faculty, and the market as well as the way these interact with the research ecosystem more generally. Examining these norms is important, especially in understanding where they come from, their purposes, and what happens when they interact with the contextual realities and knowledge of the people and spaces to which they are applied. 

Becoming increasingly aware of the limitations in these studies, which mainly arise from the fact that these studies do not adequately examine how ideology and the politics of knowledge inform the current postgraduate research training and the research landscape, this paper will discuss dominant ideologies that are persistent in our education system and make the linkage between the current gaps in postgraduate training and the politics of knowledge. As such, the roots of these struggles are deeper and linked to the existing and ongoing call from notable African scholars and others on the centrality of embracing norms that foster contextually grounded research in Africa. This means being conscious and willing to remedy, as a researcher, the historical and persistent knowledge production inequalities in the continent, such as the marginalization and invisibility of African scholars’ contributions to research, including the misrepresentation of African ways of knowing and communities in research (Ntaragwi & Okwany, 2020). It also means not doing research for the sake of it but to collaboratively develop research goals with communities so that research becomes meaningful to those it intends to serve. This type of research also means adapting more inclusive methodologies, research approaches, theories, knowledge, questions and methods of data collection, and analytical categories that resonate with the diversities of the communities we intend to work with (Okwany & Hasina, 2015). To enable this, we need to meaningfully conceptualize, design, and analyze research projects with communities from the beginning to the end, even at the postgraduate level. This means that funding research norms and systems may need to become more flexible and open to funding these diverse methodologies.

Based on the preceding, I argue in this paper that the challenges of postgraduate studies and research training in Kenya can, in part, be traced to the complex interactions between a troubling colonial history of education in Africa and neoliberal ideologies imported from outside Africa into the higher education sector and how they intersect with the diverse and dynamic knowledge and social-cultural context in the continent. In the context of postgraduate research training, this means shifting from the current teaching approaches that are based on what Paul Freire in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed calls the ‘banking concept’² (2005: 72), which turns students into bankers of knowledge and rewards the same rather than evoking their critical consciousness and their transformation. The banking concept approach alienates students and trainers from their world and reality, serving the interest of what Freire calls the ‘oppressors’ (ibid.: 73-4). This is illustrated by how some researchers treat communities as objects of constant scrutiny through research rather than social actors. I then showcase how, considering these complexities, the organization I founded, Eider Africa, continually examines these challenges and offers expanded spaces for African scholars to reflect and move towards articulating contextually grounded research.

If asked to describe my approach at Eider Africa and my orientations as a researcher, I would quote Maya Angelou’s Our Grandmother’s Poem and say, ‘I go forth along and stand as ten thousand.’ I draw inspiration, resilience, support, and strength from the collective heritage of African voices in scholarship and communities. In addition, my scholarly foundations have been influenced by knowledge activism, decolonial work, and the intellectual output of great African scholars and scholars from other contexts who call for African voices to be at the center of telling African stories. I was a laureate of the Children and Youth Institute at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) 2015. This is one of the central institutions in Africa that was set up to promote African-led scholarship. While there, I was exposed to a wealth of contributions from African scholars in social research that I did not know existed. This is the reality for most postgraduate students who cannot access this work quickly and are exposed to Western scholarship in their training such that they unintentionally marginalize African contributions, which explains the glaring absence of African scholars’ contributions in their thesis’ bibliographies (Ntaragwi & Okwany, 2020). 

Locating postgraduate research training challenges

To understand the challenges that affect postgraduate research training, we need to highlight the foundations of education and research in Kenya and Africa in general. A troubling colonial history has influenced scholarship in Africa, and I agree with prominent African scholar Oddora Hoppers, who states that it is necessary to ‘acknowledge that the education systems inherited from the colonial period must be challenged and transformed, which means redefining the goals, content, structures, methods, approaches, and values of education, as part of a mold-breaking strategy’ (2000). As a result of this colonial history, the development of education systems in Africa has been founded on an erasure of African contextualized knowledge and systems of knowing in favor of western-based knowledges. This is evidenced in the dominance of Western language in research, publication spaces, ideology, theories, research agenda, and the elevation of Western scholars over others in respect. This erasure has translated into distorted representations of African communities in research, where instead of being framed as speaking subjects and active participants in producing and using their knowledge, Africans have become mere objects of study (Okwany & Hasina, 2015). I, for instance, currently work in the space of development consultancy. I witness problematically how the research agenda, research theories, questions, methods, and dissemination mechanisms of specific development projects like water, climate, finance, education, and health are set from the donors’ worldview (often western-based). We, as consultants, have to work within these frameworks with sometimes little wiggle room. Although we push for more inclusive research approaches, the dominant narrative is still enduring, and we keep going, nonetheless.

Therefore, I argue that meaningful deliberations should be made to disentangle the complexities that challenge postgraduate research training in Kenya and the continent. We need to constantly reflect on and address historical legacies. This can be done by examining the norms it has produced and how they shape the systems developed for postgraduate research training. These systems have interacted with changing economic, political, socio-cultural, and technological systems in Africa today and have created enduring challenges and opportunities in the higher education space. They have influenced how education, research, and their purpose, is conceptualized in institutions of higher learning and impacted how the goals of postgraduate research training are understood, thereby helping to create unequal systems of knowledge production that have been insensitive and marginalizing to the local context.

For example, neoliberalism is one of the most dominant economic models interacting with our colonial history and shaping the purpose and value of education (Okune & Ulrich, 2021; Nyamnjoh, 2019; Njoya, 2019). The neoliberal ideology promotes reduced government intervention in terms of regulation reduction in government spending, resulting in limited social safety nets in favor of the privatization of the education sector that is left to the mercy of market forces. The effects of a market-driven higher education have been the following: introduction of tuition fees, which has driven unequal access to higher education; increased privatization of universities; reduced government spending on research and public institutions; a market-driven curriculum, which has led to a push for education for employment and the market. (Kigotho, 2018) A growing pool of part-time academic staff who are involved in consultancies to supplement their income limits their engagement in research and research training (Nyamnjoh, 2019).

I have seen how these ideologies shape postgraduate students’ aspirations in conversations with them. For example, I would ask them why they are doing this master’s or PhD; the majority would answer that they chose it because it is marketable, while others were looking forward to a job promotion after completion. When I asked what led them to choose this or that research topic, the responses were varied. While some were deeply passionate about the issue they were studying, others had chosen a topic that suited their current time and financial capacities or one that fulfilled the graduation criteria. All these responses are valid; however, I agree with the African scholar Wandia Njoya, who calls for the delinking of university education with employment and states that ‘..Degrees are academic qualifications for an education that improves the human experience through a raised consciousness, broad knowledge, and mastery of skill’ (Njoya, 2019). I believe education has a broader, self-transformational, relational, and collective goal than just to create employment or learn skills. This view is particularly important in a continent that has faced erasure and silencing of its knowledge and people’s experiences through research.

Initiatives to actualize contextually grounded research in Africa – The example of Eider Africa

Eider Africa’s role is to create collaborative spaces and processes that center the voice of African postgraduate scholars and revive the African research ecosystem by complementing the role of universities. We aim to ensure that African scholars are responsible for producing and using knowledge on the continent. We envision nurturing African researchers or professionals (we recognize not all postgraduate students have to be researchers) who transform and become competent, critical, reflexive, collaborative, and ethical. We want to build a critical mass of African scholars embracing contextually grounded research practices. We recognize that for this to happen, it must go beyond the individual and extend our work to build research movements of African storytellers (researchers) together with our diverse communities. I highlight some of the work we are doing with like-minded partners at Eider Africa to build these research movements and advance contextually grounded research below:

Establishing communities of postgraduate students. We are leveraging accessible technology like WhatsApp to grow communities of African scholars through what we call the Africana Journal Club, a multi-disciplinary, multi-university online space we have created to bring together over six hundred and growing African postgraduate students and accompany them throughout their research journeys for as long as they want to remain in the group. Doctoral students are often isolated from their universities and each other; they work in silos and interact with students from their discipline and university only. To build research movements, we must unite African scholars and promote non-hierarchical communities that enable scholars to support each other. For example, we have co-designed activities in the club that members participate in at no cost, and we motivate them to peer review each other’s work and learn from and celebrate each other. Our pool of mentors is mainly made up of African researchers and lecturers. Our activities are facilitated through what I would call African Philanthropy, whereby the scholars and mentors voluntarily share their knowledge, resources, and support. And I, as the founder, provide both labor and financial resources to cover the costs of our activities.

Transforming the learning and teaching of research in our universities. We recognize that the approaches and methodologies currently used to teach in our universities cannot promote practices that embrace contextually grounded research because they essentially promote the above-mentioned banking approach to teaching and learning. They do not provide an environment where postgraduate students can develop their voices and worldviews as African researchers and learn diverse methodologies to comprehensively and responsibly tell African stories. Therefore, Eider Africa joined the Association for Faculty Enrichment in Learning and Teaching (AFELT), an organization trying to improve learning and teaching in universities by embracing transformative pedagogy. Together, we are developing a transformative research learning and teaching course for lecturers. This work is essential because it is part of building the research movement on contextually grounded research among African scholars.

Contributing to the Research Data Share, a scholarly-owned and -run digital platform that attempts to explore, through practice, the challenges and opportunities of sharing qualitative data. The Research Data Share platform draws together Kenya-based researchers to reflect on our experiences and practices and to create an archive of data and meta-data that grows the knowledge commons in Kenya. The aim of this collective is to advance more open, inclusive, responsible research practices and non-commercial infrastructures that embrace diverse collaborative ways of knowing, examining data, and increasing research transparency by posting our meta-data publicly for further debate and analysis.

Training on open peer review in Africa in the context of scholarly publication and pre-prints. Open peer review is critical for African scholars because opaque peer review processes have hindered and prevented many postgraduate students from getting published. The course invites participants to reflect on their biases as they conduct peer review; it exposes them to different ways the peer review processes can be open, promotes collective peer review practices, and provides technical guides on conducting a peer review. Eider Africa was part of a partnership that included PREreview, elife, Training Center in Communication-Africa, and AfricArXiv. This partnership aimed to deliver training for African Scholars and develop open-source resources for anyone who wants to conduct this training. After the training, Eider Africa has been conducting training with university-based journal editors and lecturers on open peer review. The most important outcome of these trainings is lecturers reflecting on how they provide postgraduate students feedback on their thesis, including manuscripts, and how they can do better at giving clear, actionable, and constructive feedback.

In conclusion, as the movement for meta-research is gaining momentum, contextually grounded research practices and approaches could be woven in as a mechanism to re-distribute power in research economies, particularly in Africa, to reposition communities and African scholars from the margins to the center so that they are enabled to lead and tell African stories.

References

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