About Africa ProActive
Africa Proactive seeks to bring attention to the thriving political lives of people in the African continent. This blog spotlights specific examples of the different ways that people reflect on their hopes and frustrations through proactive responses to African politics. With a focus on how citizens of African countries come together as individuals and collectives, through civil society, protest movements, activism and artistic production, the blog features posts that analyze politics across social groups and from the ground up. With a special focus on Ghana, it seeks to bring into conversation various connections between social movements, artistic, as well as religious responses to politics, and their national and transnational routes and circulations.
Guest Contributions: We welcome and encourage guest contributions to the Africa ProActive blog. If you have an idea, artwork, or experience you want to share with our readers, please send us a message using the form below.
Our Team
Dr. Girish Daswani
Girish is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UTSC. He grew up in Singapore, has family in Ghana and earned a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science before moving to the University of Toronto. Girish’s research is in Ghana and includes topics such as religion, morality and ethics, transnationalism, corruption, and activism. His most recent scholarly work has been exploring different activist and religious responses to corruption in Ghana. In addition to several journal articles, he has published a monograph entitled Looking Back, Moving Forward: Transformation and Ethical Practice in the Ghanaian Church of Pentecost (2015, University of Toronto Press) and co-edited A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism Studies with Prof. Ato Quayson (2013, Wiley-Blackwell).
Follow Girish on Twitter @girishdaswani
Amidu Mutaru
Amidu is a PhD student at the anthropology department of the University of Toronto. Amidu, born and bred by a non-elite large family in the Northeastern Ghana, has completed all his elementary and secondary education in this region in the face of significant socio-economic perils. Amidu has secured funding supports at various stages of his post-secondary studies leading to awards of BA Religious Studies and MSc African Studies from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and Oxford University respectively. Amidu’s research interests lie in the theoretical crossroads among cyber frauds, spirituality, migration and morality in Ghana. His PhD dissertation focuses (or intends to focus) on how Ghanaian youth intrumentalization of spirituality influence economic and technological mobilities, but also raises questions of morality and moral discourses in Ghana and beyond
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Former Member - Miriam Hird-Younger
Miriam is a PhD Candidate and Vanier Scholar in the Department of Anthropology, collaborative with Women and Gender Studies, at the University of Toronto. She grew up on a sheep farm in Southern Ontario, but has spent the last nine years working and researching in the development sector in West Africa. Miriam’s research explores the ways that moral discourses, like trust and mistrust, are negotiated in the politics of international development. Her dissertation research focuses on the experiences of civil society participating in development partnerships and networks in Ghana.