Africa Knows

This week, we get to hear Dr Abdourahmane Idrissa, a Nigerien philosopher and political scientist based in Leiden but who has worked and lived all around the world. Idrissa’s areas of research expertise include the state, Islam, democracy, and security in the Sahel and West Africa more broadly.
In this episode, he speaks with Henry and Gaddafi a truly wide range of subjects, from the impact of 9/11 on his academic path to the birth and death of the Songhai empire, and from the intellectual prophets of the 1960s to West African social structure - and, of course, the security crises in the Sahel.

In this episode I'm speaking to Dr. Samuel Ntewusu, the director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra.
Prof. Ntewusu is an expert in African history and politics and teaches African studies and specifically courses on chieftaincy and development in Africa. We talk about moral icons, chiefs, the impact of the display of wealth by Ghanaian politicians, how to be approachable as a teacher, and a lot more.

In this episode, you’ll hear Dr Mildred Ambani Songoro, a university lecturer and Land Use Planner, GIS Expert, and Cartographer with over ten years’ experience in Nairobi, Kenya. In this episode, Charity talks with her about why “planners come after God”, about what it means to teach urban planning in the aftermath of COVID, about her research on industrial gentrification in Nairobi, and how to prevent a PhD from giving you permanent head damage.

In this episode, we are introduced to Dr. Angela Adeoye, a senior lecturer at the University of Jos whose work sits at the intersection of gender, conflict management, and development. Drawing on her research in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Northern Nigeria, she reflects on how gender-based violence is shaped by conflict and displacement. Dr Adeoye also speaks candidly about the realities of Nigerian academia, including mystification, chronic underfunding and its impact on research quality.

In this first episode of the brand new season, we are introduced to Dr. Zubairu Dagona, a professor at the University of Jos who specialises in Clinical Psychology at the University of Jos. In this conversation, he shares how engagement with qualitative methods has shaped his understanding of trauma and healing within the Nigerian context. Dr. Dagona also articulates a compelling argument against the reliance on Western instruments, suggesting that such practices can perpetuate neocolonial attitudes in research. Besides that, he critiques the prevalent academic culture that dismisses qualitative research as inferior, advocating for a comprehensive approach that includes both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.