098 – Institutional Change in Ghana: Abib’s Experiences and Observations

[00:00:00] David: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS, and it’s my pleasure today to be here with Abib, who I have known now for 10 years. It’s over 10 years. I can’t believe it. We first met in Ghana where a mutual friend, Francis, who I believe has been on an episode already, dragged me to Ghana to supervise his master’s, and I met this group of amazing students who were the first students at AIMS Ghana.

[00:00:38] Abib: Yes, that’s right.

[00:00:39] David: And you were one of them.

[00:00:40] Abib: Yes, there was.

[00:00:44] David: AIMS Ghana, for those who haven’t heard of AIMS before, this is the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences. AIMS Ghana was the third such institute after Senegal, and of course, South Africa, the original AIMS. And you were part of the first cohort. I still remember you, it was an interesting experience being that first cohort. You moved venues, things were not quite set up yet.

[00:01:09] Abib: Right.

[00:01:10] David: But you got a pretty amazing experience in terms of the people you met, the exposure. Exactly.

[00:01:16] Abib: Yeah, and the sorts of things that we got involved in. I differ a bit with you on AIMS Ghana, no, AIMS South Africa being the original AIMS.

[00:01:24] David: Why do you differ on that? It’s obviously the case. It was almost 10 years old. It was almost 10 years old by the end, but it was recognised.

[00:01:32] Abib: Are you saying AIMS Ghana was fake?

[00:01:34] David: No, I’m not saying AIMS Ghana was fake.

[00:01:36] Abib: Okay.

[00:01:36] David: I’m saying that the concept of AIMS was conceived as AIMS in South Africa.

[00:01:44] Abib: True. I think I wouldn’t say original, probably, it was initially started.

[00:01:48] David: But that’s what origin means. So original has in it within the origin. As listeners, I hope you recognise, we’re mathematicians, definitions, matter. And so, you know, the idea of AIMS was formed in South Africa, it was Neil Turok who sort of set it up and you ended up winning the TED prize, which is what led to the expansion of the AIMS network. The concept, I think still for you, going through in those early days, it was, different then, than it is now.

I don’t know how much you’ve stayed in touch. I have a bit of nostalgia for those early days where things weren’t as well established, where things were more I think…

[00:02:33] Abib: Ad hoc.

[00:02:34] David: Ad hoc is an interesting way of putting it, but yes. But as you say, you got so much exposure. There was a lot of excitement. There were a whole set of different people coming in.

[00:02:42] Abib: Right, right.

[00:02:42] David: There wasn’t really a sense of structure to the program. There was a lot of individuality that came with the lecturers who came through.

[00:02:49] Abib: Yes, very different kinds of style of teaching, way of getting into material, what kind of stuff that we studied.

[00:02:57] David: Exactly. It wasn’t a content based masters, which is what I loved about it. It was an experience based masters.

[00:03:04] Abib: Yes, I guess you could say that. I guess you could say that, we went to very different bits of maths. Although the teams were more applied and then pure maths. So you do a bit of graph theory, I remember we did sandpiles, Abelian sandpiles, then you are doing information theory, then you are doing fields what do you call it?

[00:03:25] David: Yeah, it’s algebra, in different senses.

[00:03:27] Abib: Yeah.

[00:03:28] David: You had everything. You had the physics, you had data things. Different experiences. And, you know, the idea being there were students from across the continent, and you met these different, amazing students from across the continent. And it was all about those experiences, those interchanges as well.

[00:03:42] Abib: Right, right, I think it was the first time I was in a class with somebody who was from Egypt or from somewhere you were from Rwanda or somebody else from, what do you call it? Madagascar. It was very, very nice and very, very different, and you get to learn a lot from all of these people and how people look at stuff.

[00:04:00] David: Exactly. That mixing of these very different students gives you as much. And of course the two layers, because you don’t just have the lecturers, you have your tutors, and the experiences, what you learned from them and what you shared with them, it was a very interesting, very well thought out concept for a degree. And that led to, not just you, but a lot of your colleagues getting very different experiences.

[00:04:23] Abib: I would imagine. Yeah, I would say that’s true.

[00:04:27] David: And for you yourself, you didn’t have necessarily an easy route through after AIMS, I would argue, but you’ve had some incredible experiences. So do you want to just talk us through some, because you worked of course with us and you went to, was it Tanzania you came to?

[00:04:42] Abib: Yes.

[00:04:42] David: Yeah.

[00:04:43] Abib: Tanzania and then to Kenya.

[00:04:45] David: And then to Kenya.

[00:04:46] Abib: Yeah. We were in Ghana originally, I think it was through our work that I first went to the North, which was really…

[00:04:51] David: Oh, that’s true, yes. You went up to northern Ghana. Yes, I remember that. And then of course, you went to Tanzania, to Kenya, and then you left us, but you joined the university at Lagon. Was that your next big step, or is there something else you should mention before that?

[00:05:07] Abib: Yes. There was something else.

[00:05:08] David: Okay.

[00:05:09] Abib: So yeah. So after, I was doing different bits of things right off that.

[00:05:12] David: Yes.

[00:05:13] Abib: But I think immediately I did a lot of learning trying to find out more about these models that we worked on, got a bit into machine learning. And so that sort of drove an interest and curiosity along those lines. I started looking for opportunities, like data science, do summer schools and those kind of things. I immersed myself in those kind of things going forward. I did bits of work here and there, but nothing very…

[00:05:37] David: I still remember the work you did at Lagon with the university group there where you were sort of, almost in, wasn’t admissions, but it was almost the administration side of things where you got a little bit involved. Is that right?

[00:05:48] Abib: Yes. Yes. This was after my experience in… I was in Cape Town for a bit, and then I also was in Germany for a bit, and then a little, a few months in Italy, then back in Ghana. That’s when I got involved with…

[00:06:02] David: With the university, okay, I thought it was the other way around.

[00:06:05] Abib: Yeah, I’d been to Germany before I was back in Ghana with the university for some time. Which was right after COVID, COVID was easing up a bit.

[00:06:13] David: And I’ve never really dug into your experience there, but I remember talking a little bit about this. You were somehow in the university, you’d got yourself into a position where you were, helping the university look at some of their own data.

[00:06:28] Abib: Yes. I did a lot of data analysis trying to inform university policy at the university. One of the things that we did was to work on the… So the school has the sporting concessions that they grant to students who come in who are stronger. And so the question was to understand, are students who are admitted based on their sporting prowess doing any better than students who are, what do you call it, regular students or standard admits?

And it was interesting to point out the numbers weren’t very different. And so it meant that the university would up quote or continue the sporting concession, which was very good.

[00:07:05] David: Let me just check I’ve understood this, because this is important in so many ways. Many people may not know the role that this has played. And here we are explaining it. But the university was worried that admitting students based on their sporting ability was compromising the academic standards of the institution.

[00:07:23] Abib: Right.

[00:07:24] David: And your analysis found that wasn’t the case.

[00:07:27] Abib: Right.

[00:07:28] David: And that was the data that was needed to support the fact that the university continued these sorts of scholarship programs.

[00:07:35] Abib: True.

[00:07:35] David: It’s the sort of thing, it may seem to people these are trivial things, but they’re not, many students will have benefited because of this, in a way where that combination of people with talent, sporting talent, being able to get an education is so important. It’s a system which the U. S., of course, has used for a long time. But the concern that you highlight is a concern which is shared in other contexts as well. And so to have found that in the…

[00:08:03] Abib: In the Ghanaian context.

[00:08:05] David: I think that’s too general. I was about to say that, but I think you only did the analysis for Lagon. But in that one context, which is one of the most important universities in the country.

[00:08:13] Abib: Yes.

[00:08:13] David: In that context, you were able to show that the university wasn’t compromising on academic quality by including these scholarships. And therefore a whole nother generation of people are going to benefit. We often forget the importance of these details. And I think it’s really, you know, to have those sorts of experiences, to have been able to be part of analyses which actually shape policy within an institution is quite an experience.

[00:08:38] Abib: It is. But I think just to go back off.

[00:08:42] David: Yeah.

[00:08:42] Abib: Because it’s particularly interesting I don’t speak for any particular person, but the sort of experience I gathered just interacting with some of my friends who were sportsmen in school, or had interest in sports and didn’t want to pursue it because a lot of them felt like there wasn’t a lot of support from the university in how people get along. If I was a maths student and I wanted to be running for the school, how does that sort of fit in?

[00:09:06] David: Yeah.

[00:09:07] Abib: It means I take a lot of my time doing sports, how that fit into my classes, my grades.

[00:09:12] David: Yeah.

[00:09:12] Abib: Because eventually I’m here for my degree. I’m not here to get the supporting. And so getting a lot more support from the university, I think that would be generally very useful and will encourage people. Because the numbers do show evidently that people who are sportsmen are equally as good as…

[00:09:31] David: I myself can speak to this because I have represented every university I studied at in volleyball. And so I was sort of a two to four hour sports a day when I was a student. As you can see now, I’ve left, lost a bit of that! [Laughs]. I’m not quite as active as I used to be. But, you know, I believe very strongly that that time I invested in the sport has paid off immensely, and my studies didn’t suffer. It made me more focused when I was working on other things. It gave me a real focus to my downtime, if you want.

And more than that, I learned skills in that, that I used as part of my, I suppose, my further education when I was a tutor teaching, actually I used the skills I learned as a volleyball coach, coached volleyball for 10 years throughout university in different ways. And those skills are what I then brought to bear when I had to teach as a maths tutor, and actually then as a maths lecturer.

And so the fact that you actually have that almost double life, if you want, as a sports person and a student of a particular discipline. That’s something which I believe very strongly helped me and many others in their university time. So I agree, this is something where I fully support the work you’ve done on making that possible and more accessible in Ghana.

[00:10:52] Abib: And another important point about that is how sporting generally includes your mental health. That is also useful, particularly when you’re doing your studies.

[00:11:02] David: Absolutely. And this is the sort of thing which in the UK and in a lot of, sort of, I would argue European culture is talked about quite a lot. But in Ghana, this isn’t talked about this much.

[00:11:15] Abib: I remember a few people who have done some of this work, Dr. Araba Sefa-Dede, who is late now, who did a lot of work in that area. I’m not really following some of these things, I can’t mention what people are doing right now, but I know there’s a lot of awareness now about it.

[00:11:30] David: And that’s very recent. 10 years ago, I know this was something where in Ghana, this was a lot less common and discussed and so on. And so this is a very interesting sort of transition period, which is happening in many ways. And so to dig into this more generally in Ghana what have you seen changed over the last sort of 10, 15 years? Because it’s had its ups and downs in different ways, but there has been a sort of change culturally, which is sort of emerging. What do you feel?

[00:12:00] Abib: I, to be honest, I think I’ll turn too superficial to get into this.

[00:12:04] David: Okay, you’d rather not dig into this.

[00:12:07] Abib: I don’t think I know, I’ve observed enough to say something very constructive.

[00:12:11] David: One of the things that I’ve observed, you know, in my interactions in Ghana over the years, which is sort of 10 years time span, where I’ve really been involved, is that there’s, despite the ups and downs with the economy, there has very much been a sense of maturity, I feel, which is emerging in the society in certain ways.

The institutions are strengthening in different ways. And I’ve seen this in the universities where, when I was there 10 years ago, a lot of the very young universities then, they’ve matured. You feel there’s a sort of sense of maturity in the country. I’m talking particularly from observing the academic institutions, but I feel that they are representative of institutional strengthening.

And this is, I think, in contrast to many other African countries I found where, somehow in Ghana, I felt a real institutional strength growing. I see the sort of examples you’ve got of the university doing these sorts of studies, trying to investigate this. Ten years ago, there weren’t those efforts in the same way. There was a sense, it was still well, we just need to get lecturers trained because we don’t have enough staff.

There’s definitely that sense of institutional maturity, which is, I feel, again, I’m speaking from my observation, particularly of the universities, but there’s a real sense that, in the last 10 years, Ghanaian institutions are strengthened. And you’d agree with that statement?

[00:13:38] Abib: Yeah, I think quite roughly, yeah, I think I would agree with that. You do see shifts, you do see a lot of capacity buildings, which is a response to growth and changes within the institutions. I was speaking specifically from my experience in the University of Ghana where there was a lot of capacity building within our team to embrace a lot of new methods into turning a lot of the analytics and to really drive data-driven decisions in the university. Which is a very strengthening quality.

I think also when you look in the lens in ed-tech, I do see from I think from 2011 when we sort of like finished undergrads and were venturing out, there was a lot of us who moved into tech sort of roles, even though a lot of them were, most of us came from mathematics. Generally if you took a maths degree, everybody be wondering, hey, what are you going to do with it? Do you want to become a teacher?

[00:14:36] David: Yeah.

[00:14:36] Abib: And now we’re seeing the importance of mathematics education for us, and it is becoming increasingly relevant and people are getting more interested in it because they see, what do you call it, new career paths in that regard.

[00:14:51] David: And I think it’s really interesting you say this, because I’ve had similar discussions with Francis over the years. But if you think about your experiences at school and at undergraduates, and you now look at the experiences of the students now, you can see that shift. And I feel that shift corresponds in some sense to the institutional strengthening that I’m observing in other ways, that there is a shift in the experiences that people are going through.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everything’s perfect. Everything’s not perfect in the UK or anywhere else either. So I’m not trying to diminish the challenges that still exist within the systems. But it is I find really inspiring to see the experiences that I heard from your generation, and I look at the current generation, and I don’t hear those same experiences in some ways, some of the challenges you guys faced.

There were different challenges. I’m not saying that it’s challenge free, but you do sense that real sense of movement.

[00:15:45] Abib: Right. So for example during our time we didn’t really, I’m going to piggyback off the tech, this thing coding. During our time we didn’t do any coding. But now there’s a lot of coding that’s done in the university at undergraduate level. And that already prepares you for these things.

[00:16:04] David: I’m probably biassed because of what I see. But the big thing that I see…

[00:16:08] Abib: Let me just correct, I think there was no coding done, particularly in maths degrees.

[00:16:12] David: In maths degrees. But, I’m biassed because of what I see is also the maths thing. And what I’ve observed over the years is that, Lagon, they hadn’t had a maths PhD for years until Prince [Dr. Prince K. Osei] got his PhD there. And now, there’s been an explosion of well trained people going through, getting, higher degrees, actually coming back, then teaching. That dynamism of the staff, the way the staff are trained, where they’re trained, how they’re trained, that’s what I’ve observed much more in some sense, and just the strength in the institution.

As you say, the coding initiative could come from an individual lecturer, but once it’s in, that’s institution building. It’s individuals within the institution slowly taking steps forward. And that progress over the last 10 years, when you look back at it, I find it so impressive.

[00:16:56] Abib: Yeah, it is. It’s very interesting.

[00:16:59] David: We’re running out of time, but I’m going to want to finish with sort of, you know, it’s been really exciting to me that, actually, we’ve reconnected recently and there’s a possibility, of course it’s not guaranteed yet and we don’t know exactly, but you’re here with us at our team meeting, you’ve been exposed to IDEMS, and there’s a good possibility you’re going to join us.

What I’d be interested in sort of understanding from you, just to finish off is, in this last few days, you’ve experienced the team, you’ve seen lots of things, what is it that you’ve found about IDEMS, which is maybe, I don’t know, which has struck you over the last few days as you’ve interacted with people? Is there anything you’d like to sort of share about this and the experience you’ve had with us? Maybe in reflection to this idea of institutions maybe being a bit different and thinking about institutions.

[00:17:55] Abib: I think I learned this thing, one of the staff here was what do you call it, it’s also a magician. I found that particularly interesting he had a physics and philosophy degree and then he’s also doing physics. And you see that sort of breadth in terms of diversity and the talent and the people are working here on different projects.

You can think of, I don’t think of IDEMS as a startup, but I think in some loose way you can characterize as such and how like everybody seems to be working on very different bits of the project and it’s all hands on deck.

[00:18:33] David: Yeah, and I think one of the things just to draw out of what you’ve just said is this idea that people are often multidimensional.

[00:18:40] Abib: Right.

[00:18:40] David: Which resonates probably with yourself.

[00:18:42] Abib: Yeah, I think that that’s great. Also, people are very down to earth, very welcoming and very polite. But also people do know their stuff.

[00:18:54] David: Coming from the more academic environment you’ve come from where sometimes people get a little bit removed from that reality, there is that element of actually people being very practical down to earth, but academically very strong. So you’re right. That’s very relevant to the fact that people are actually having to work on things where they’re not the expert. They are experts at other things, but they’re having to work on things where they’re not the expert, and they’re having to learn.

[00:19:19] Abib: Right

[00:19:20] David: And I suppose that’s the last thing that I’d say, you’ve been challenged a lot in your life in different ways and different things.

[00:19:26] Abib: I guess this is not a podcast to like discuss.

[00:19:28] David: You don’t need to discuss. There are all these challenges in different ways. But there is this element that coming in we never put people in their comfort zone. And so the hope is that you’ll get involved with us, we’ve got this rush work that needs to be done, but it is quite challenging.

There’s this element that there’s a certain set of people who like being challenged and like rising to that challenge and that’s what I believe this multidimensionality corresponds to and I really look forward to interacting and continuing to interact in the future.

Thank you.

[00:19:58] Abib: Thank you very much David.