If you really want to make a difference, get out there and get stuck in
Christine Cheng I am currently working in Liberia, researching post-conflict political authority for a PhD. I am interested in who controls local political authority after war and why. My background is unusual in that I studied systems design engineering at undergraduate level. I then got involved in politics and went on to do a Masters in public affairs, during which I became interested in war and the issues of refugees, political economy and peacekeeping. To get more involved with Africa, come as a visitor or try working for an NGO or a government, especially at a local level.
Steven Lichty I'm the international communications manager for Medair, a Swiss emergency/relief agency, working mostly in south Sudan. My job consists of preparing donor reports for our funding agencies, managing communication budgets and overseeing public relations. After my business studies degree, I worked with an agency in Nepal and India. I then transferred to Africa, where I worked for two years, primarily in administration and education, after which I began a Masters in international relations. I now hope to obtain a PhD in political development, but I felt I wanted to gain more African experience first. My position with Medair has allowed me to see, first hand, the political and economic development of south Sudan. The Africa studied at an academic level is quite different from the reality of living and working in Africa. My advice to people interested in engaging with African issues is first to read a biography of the continent - Paul Nugent's Africa Since Independence: a comparative history and Robert Guest's The Shackled Continent are good - and then volunteer or work here.
Kathryn Nwajiaku I am a tutor in African politics at the University of Oxford, working on the politics of identity and oil in Nigeria. I have been researching Africa since 1992 and have spent seven years working there with a variety of development NGOs. My work involved research and policy analysis on oil, gas, trade and investment. I am a Brit of Nigerian origin, so was perhaps drawn to Africa because of that. Having lived and worked in Africa and the UK, I am appalled at the bad press and lack of understanding from which Africa suffers over here. This has made me eager to press on with research to change that. My advice to others? Study Africa, not necessarily formally - although that is useful - but where access is easiest. Meet Africans at clubs or churches and, most essentially, visit Africa.
Stuart Wilson I'm a research officer at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), part research institute, part public interest law firm. I am currently working on three projects: education for African and coloured children on historically white-owned commercial farms; the impact of user fees on access to public education; and forced evictions in inner-city Johannesburg. On the litigation side, I am involved in a number of high court cases that mean acting on behalf of very poor people against the government. They range from defending 300 people against forced evictions to reviewing a government decision not to construct a new set of school buildings for an impoverished township where more than 400 children are out of school. I did a BA in politics and always thought I'd go on to become a criminal defence barrister. But after two placements in Africa during university holidays - one doing education-related research in a rural area of KwaZulu-Natal, the other working for CALS on education-related litigation - I was hooked. I wrote a funding proposal for the Education Law Project, which was eventually accepted, and I moved here. My advice to others who want to do something? Be here. There's nothing worse than passing comment on what's going on in Africa when you haven't actually been here. Also, have a career goal and a skill you want to develop. Wanting to be "engaged in African issues" is not enough.
Christopher Pallas I did a BA in religious studies and worked for four years as a campus minister. Helping in inner-city neighbourhoods and my abhorrence at the national lack of introspection following 9/11 both played key roles in my leaving the ministry to do a Masters in policy studies. I then joined the Peace Corps as an NGO adviser, with responsibility for small business development. I work in Togo, in a trading hub with a population of about 15,000 people. The mainstay of my work is personal finance, a key problem in poor communities. An agricultural economy compounds this problem: thanks to sharp seasonal fluctuations in income, people rarely have money for important expenses such as school fees or a health crisis. Small credit unions can help people develop savings as well as dispense loans and lend to farmers and traders whose needs are too small to be met by the banks. I continue to study French and Kotokoli (a local language), participate in local celebrations and host meals at my house. My advice to people wanting to engage with African issues: get a map and find on it every place that comes up in the news. It will make Africa real to you.
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