Local positionality in the production of knowledge in Northern Uganda

This article examines the positionality of local stakeholders in the production of knowledge through fieldwork in qualitative research in Northern Uganda. While scholarly literature has evolved on the positionality and experiences of researchers from the Global North in (post)conflict environments, little is known about the positionality and experiences of local stakeholders in the production of knowledge. This article is based on interviews and focus groups with research assistants and respondents in Northern Uganda. Using a phenomenological approach, this article analyzes the positionality and experiences of these research associates and respondents during fieldwork. Three themes emerged from these interviews and are explored in this article: power, fatigue, and safety. This article emphasizes that researchers need to be reflexive in their practices and highlights the need to reexamine how researchers are trained in qualitative methods before going into the field. This article is further critical of the behavior of researchers and how research agendas impact local stakeholders during and after fieldwork

Global crisis and research production:COVID-19 as shaper and shaker or micro-interruption?

This special issue asks what happens to international research and collaboration when the research community becomes temporarily immobilized. The COVID-19 global pandemic powerfully disrupted normal ways of doing research and, therefore, created a perfect natural experiment of the “otherwise” for digital qualitative research in sensitive contexts. The collected papers argue that the lessons extracted from this recent global health crisis should shape our thinking on qualitative research amid crisis and research on the crisis. The authors speak to core themes like the digital platforming of research, continued inequality in research relations, and the concept of compounding crises. The special issue reflects on the authors’ own experiences with international collaborations during COVID-19 in a multiplicity of contexts from Peru, to Pakistan, Mexico and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This introductory essay argues that the uniquely rapid and global context of COVID-19 offered a glimpse into one possible alterity of research production. It extracts lessons for the present and future, not only for other global crises, but for willed disruptions of research relations so that these are marked by less inequality and more balanced power relations

Transitions from Primary to Lower Secondary School: A Focus on Equity

This background paper explores the dynamics that affect transitions from primary to lower secondary school, with a focus on equity. It forms part of series of papers contributing to a broader initiative of tracking the demand and supply sides factors that influence access to secondary education and prepare African youth for the future of work. Whilst case studies have been drawn from Ghana and Rwanda to assess their strengths and weaknesses to educational reforms, emphasis is on transitions from primary to lower secondary schools in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. The background paper is in two main sections: review of factors affecting transitions in sub-Saharan Africa, and case study analyses for Ghana and Rwanda with the following themes guiding the discussions: Theme 1: Access to education, progression and completion rates in primary and secondary schools; Theme 2: Trends and realities in secondary education: Equity in progression and transitions – from primary to lower secondary and upper secondary schools and equal opportunities for children with disabilities, members of religious and ethnic minorities and other forms or multiple cases of vulnerabilities; Theme 3: Learning outcomes, employability and well-being of youth with and without secondary education; Theme 4: Actionable recommendations to policymakers, implementers, donors and other stakeholders on how to improve transitions from primary to lower secondary for the marginalized populations

Women’s overlooked contribution to Rwanda’s state-building conversations

This paper does not directly engage the state-formation, political settlement and state-building debates in Africa but it foregrounds the notion of conversation as the lens through which to examine Rwanda’s state-building history. In particular, it explores an overlooked perspective from Rwanda’s state-building trajectory by focusing on a particular class of actors – women – whose voices also contributed to inter-elite and elite-society state-building from pre-colonial times. The paper examines how and why conversible spaces have been created in post-genocide Rwanda that are locally conceived yet given form by Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) elites. It shows that these spaces are progressions of a long history of state-building conversations in Rwanda that pre-date colonialism. The paper asks how and why have conversible spaces for peace and state-building evolved over time? To what extent do their contemporary form have the potential for being genuinely transformative? What do these processes mean for future peace and state building in Rwanda? In addressing these questions, this paper foregrounds women’s agency and contributions to state-building in Rwanda over time. It shows that while there is evidence that women’s agency has evolved from covert to overt spaces, limitations to women’s influence of peace-building and state-building conversations still exist particularly for those whose visions of society diverge from that of the ruling party Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccsd20hj2022Political Science

Reframing narratives of peacebuilding and statebuilding in Rwanda : a baseline study

Social and political identity in pre-colonial Rwanda was organized through family, lineages, clans and other complex factors that indicated social and political belonging. It was a well-organized society with features that resembled those of the modern state. In order to understand the origin of the racist project that resulted in a divided Rwanda in the twentieth century, the authors examine historical roots that enabled subsequent ‘divide and conquer’ tactics intrinsic to politicized identity. This paper examines Rwanda’s civil war and genocide, tracing root causes to horrific race theories and state building “conversations,” and discusses the settlement process in terms of root cause factor

Trajectories of state building and peace building in Rwanda

The study examines Rwanda’s civil war (1990-1994) and the genocide of 1994 from a historical perspective, tracing root causes surrounding the creation of the post-colonial state of Rwanda. Re-born from the carnage of genocide, Rwanda seeks to move past issues of ethnic identity which dominate the last hundred years. This paper discusses settlement processes and the extent to which they deal with root cause factors. It examines the trajectory of Rwanda’s state building experience; the factors that underlined the conflict that led to civil war and genocide; and the extent to which the resulting peace settlement addresses these factors

Music and the politics of the past : Kizito Mihigo and music in the commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda

After the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the post-genocide government spearheaded the creation of genocide commemorations. Over the past two decades, political elites and survivors’ organizations have gone to great lengths to institutionalize the memorialization, including creating laws to protect the memory of the genocide from denialism. Ordinary Rwandans have responded to the annual commemorations using creative means of support for and disagreement with the government’s interpretation of their shared violent past. Music has been used as citizen-driven tool to both spread and criticize genocide memorialization nationally and beyond. While scholars have explored the politicization of state-organized mechanisms such as memorials, citizen-driven creative means remain largely unexplored. Addressing this gap in Rwandan memory scholarship, I examine how Kizito Mihigo, a famous post-genocide musician, used his individual memory of surviving the genocide against the Tutsi through music to contribute and respond to the annual commemorations of the genocide. I argue that Mihigo’s story and commemoration songs were politicized from the start but were intensified when he used his music to go beyond promoting genocide commemorations to questioning the events and when he pleaded guilty to terrorism charges