Kajsa HA @kajsaha-blog - Tumblr Blog

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

This week, the world lost Herman Chinery-Hesse, oft called "the Bill Gates of Africa". This is how I remember him.

This week the world lost Herman Chinery-Hesse, oft called “the Bill Gates of Africa”. But the Ghanaian tech entrepreneur was, of course, 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…

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#Ghana stories #spreading the word

Knowing The Dreams Of Young People Is Important

Why Knowing The Dreams Of Young People Is Important, sharing some recent resources!

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…

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#African politics #Images of Africa #Migration Research #spreading the word #Student Migration

A strong EU, in Sweden’s interest

Together with Swedish think-tank @GlobalUt, I have written a chapter in an anthology on Swedish policy for a stronger EU

Anthology about Sweden and the EU from Global Utmaning, here Kajsa Hallberg Adu author on the chapter on migration, integration and the EU. Together with Swedish think-tank Global Utmaning, I have written a chapter in an anthology on Swedish policy for a stronger EU in areas such as migration, climate, finance, new technologies such as artificial intelligence, youth, and many more. The…

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#EU #Integration #International migration #Migration and development #Migration Research #Swedish Politics

Ghana Elections 2020, A Step Forward for Women

Election season in Ghana is special to me. I have lived through the 2008, 2012, 2016 versions of it and gotten more and more involved in each election cycle. So for 2020, I decided to be a bit proactive! Together with a colleague at the Nordic Africa Institute with a soft spot for Ghanaian politics, Diana Højlund Madsen, we planned an event and a policy note around the gendered aspects of the…

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#African politics #elections #Ghana Elections 2020 #Policy Note

Kajsa at Bokmässan: Digitalization, Culture and Freedom

Behind the scenes, Kajsa at Bokmässan

A dream came through a few weeks ago: I was a participant in in Sweden’s foremost event for the written word, the Gothenburg Bookfair.

I remember the first time I attended the fair as a student. I took the train from Uppsala to Gothenburg and stayed with a classmate. On the morning of, I walked towards the exhibit area and the closer I got the more…

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In Loving Memory of Comfort Maame Ekua Adu

As the summer moved into autumn in Sweden, days became shorter, rains fell, and our family was hit by a terrible blow. One in our midst was suddenly gone. She was called Comfort and it’s not often a person so embodies their name. She truly was a Comfort and a joy to her family and surrounding community including a large circle of friends and she will be missed.

Comfort Maame Ekua Adu

Comfor…

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Planning the Autumn: New Directions

It is September and I am back on the blog. Over the summer, I decided to take an extended social media break after reading rhetoric expert Elaine Eksvärd’s post about being present with family (in Swedish). So I was just that: present. With the family I moved apartments, we went on a little trip, swam in Stockholm’s many water bodies and played many rounds of cards!

But now the air is…

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Slow and Small Victories: Getting an Academic Paper Published

Academia is not a place for fast turnarounds. Last week, I reached a milestone which was the result of intense efforts starting 13 years ago when I first decided to apply for a Ph.D. position in migration studies at the University of Ghana. Now, this milestone quietly appeared as an automated email among many in my inbox. The communication indicated that the first paper out of my thesis had been…

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#academia #Ghana stories #Open Access #Publishing #Student Migration

Guest Blog Post at ESSA Website

In an ongoing collaboration with Education Subsaharan Africa (ESSA), I was invited to write a blog post for them. I chose to write about the problem of reliable and comparable data on higher education in African countries for ESSA’s “Doing more with Data”-series.

I write:

This year, 9.8 million students in Africa were not able to go to their universities as they used to because of the…

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#Blogging #Education #ESSA #Higher Education in Africa #Open data

State of Open Access and its Implications on African Researchers: Notes from a webinar and an interview with Joy Owango

Joy Owango, Photo borrowed from Africabusinesscommunities.com

Recently, I attended a webinar on the state of open access in Africa where I had a particular use of every presentation, focusing on support for early-career researchers like myself. See my notes with links below. The program was organized by the Training Center in Communication and led by its founding director Joy Owango. After the…

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#African Academy #Career #Joy Owango #Open Access #Open data #Open Source Software #Research

Policy Note on Key Challenges for African Universities

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

Abstract

Global and regional goals, such as Agenda 2030 and the African Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa, foreground higher education as an engine for development and job creation. Yet,…

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#African Academy #Higher Education in Africa #On Writing #Policy Note

Black Lives Matter: “There is no social contract”, says Trevor Noah

These days, just like many others, I am keenly following everything on the Black Lives Matter protests in the Unites States, and in the last days the rest of the world including 1000s on the street here in Stockholm. Is now the time racism will finally die? I think of my friends in the US and wonder how they are feeling. I look for Instagram posts about white allyship. I sit with long-reads…

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#Anna Hibiscus #Black Lives Matter #George Floyd #Lifelong Learning #Racism #Trevor Noah #White privilege

Back to Blogging: What Readers Want (spoiler: it's not what I thought!)

Back to Blogging: What Readers Want (spoiler: it’s not what I thought!)

My outdoor desk, complete with … Can you recognize the plants?

When returning to my blog, I asked you what you would like to read. When taking up the blog, in my mind I was thinking along the lines of:

Professional updates

Links to talks and publications

My view of differences between work in Sweden and Ghana

Discussions around parenting /Activities with kids

But what you want is….personal,…

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New Publication: Digital and Decolonial Experiments in the Classroom

At the end of 2018, I sat next to a man in a crowded auditorium at University of Ghana for the International Communication Association Africa conference (ICA Africa). I introduced myself and after the opening keynotes (Ghanaian Vice President Bawumiah and Cameroonian Professor Nyamnjoh), we couldn’t help but debrief together on how interesting it was. The man I was talking to was Communications…

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#Decolonize This Space #Twitter #Wikipedia

Happy Africa Day

Today, it was #AfricaDay and I did not celebrate very much from my bland WFH reality, but I thought I would share what little things I did do!

Africa Unity Speech May 24, 1963

My friend Emmanuel Gamor of the podcast Unpacking Africasent an email with this video and I really enjoyed it. Check out the pod which is full of…

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Back to Basics: Blogging as a way of Dealing (with Crisis, with Life!)

DIY WFH desk, made from an ironing board and a computer stand.

My blog has been quiet for a long time, more or less for a year with a few professional updates. I have gotten a few questions on this, and it is not due to lack of content! Actually more has happened in the last year than in previous years: I changed jobs, moved my family to a new (that’s how it felt, but it is my native) country.…

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#Blogging #Career #Corona Crisis #Everyday Life in Sweden

Guest Lecture at Uppsala University African Studies Course: Closing the Circle

Guest Lecture at Uppsala University African Studies Course: Closing the Circle (new blog post)

In November, I was invited to give a lecture in the African Studies course at Uppsala University. The lecture was to be based on my research, preferably with a link to African youth as that was a theme for this year’s course. I chose the topic: University students in Ghana, Migration Aspirations and the Colonial University.

The lecture focused on decolonial thought, reasons for studying abroad…

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#African Studies #Ashesi University #teaching #Uppsala University

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