With that, we have come to the end of the blog! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.
Couple of reflections:
When I first started writing the blog, I was actually personally pretty nervous about it. I always had this fear that I would misrepresent the countries in Africa or end up making sweeping statements about the region, country, culture, climate when really there is so much variation that is occurring within a single geography. Which is also why the first couple of blog posts was really dedicated to setting the scene right.
Along the way I started feeling more comfortable with exploring deeper into individual countries or specific case studies having felt like I had a better understanding of the geography of the region. That being said, in analysing problems, policies and thinking about the transferability of learning points from country to country, I made mental notes to appreciate individual local contexts.
One of the more exciting things that I had picked up from the course (and researching deeper when writing this blog) was the role of data and modelling in Africa. Data and modelling is becoming a huge discipline - not just in Africa - but worldwide and I think it was interesting to see how Africa could better harness technologies to develop its agricultural scene. (There's this one on biocarbon engineering which stood out for me too. They do large scale restoration efforts using aerial seeding and data collection/analysis to monitor growth!) That being said, I also noted that many of these data-driven papers that popped up in research and the ones that I read were often written by experts who were often foreigners. Postcolonial knowledge about decolonising knowledge did come to mind.
Together with the heterogeneity of geography also came the heterogeneity of countries, communities, businesses and people. Personally, I think it is in this variety of people, places, climate that amalgamates to form the biggest challenge.
Nonetheless, challenges are meant to be overcome. Countries in Africa have come a long way and I am excited to see where it goes in the future.