INSTITUTE OF AFRICAN STUDIES
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Item Diaspora grand-mothering in Nigeria(Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis, 2022-02) Busari, D. A.; Adebayo, K. O.Leaving children in the care of grandparents is a fairly common practice in close knit societies such as Nigeria. This service of providing childcare by grandmothers is however taking a transnational form with the exportation of grandmothers from Nigeria to care for grandchildren whose parents, out of economic necessity, must work fulltime. This article explores the dynamics of Nigerian grandmothers providing childcare to grandchildren in the diaspora, using twenty-five grandmothers selected in Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria based on their experience of this phenomena. Study found that participants were motivated to undertake diaspora childcare out of empathy for the younger couples, the feeling of a sense of duty, perceived knowledge of childcare, self-fulfilment, cultural norms, and the need to minimize the cost of childcare for couples in the diaspora. The sense of being ‘available’ played a significant role in participants’ decision to provide childcare abroad. The study equally showed that the practice had both emotional and social impact on the grandmothers involved. The research advances the significance of diaspora grandmother child care services as a critical part of the broader debate on companionship and gender roles in old age, especially in Africa, where elders remain key transmitters of societal norms and values.Item Local and transnational identity, positionality and knowledge production in Africa and the African diaspora(Sage, 2022) Adebayo, K. O.; Njoku, E. T.How does shared identity between researcher and the researched influence trust-building for data generation and knowledge production? We reflect on this question based on two separate studies conducted by African-based researchers in sociology and political science in Nigeria. We advanced two interrelated positions. The first underscores the limits of national belonging as shorthand for insiderness, while the second argues that when shared national/group identity is tensioned other intersecting positions and relations take prominence. We also show that the researched challenge and resist unequal power relations through interview refusal or by evading issues that the researcher considers important, but the participant perceives as intrusive. We shed light on the vagaries, overlaps, and similarities in the dynamics of belonging and positionality in researching Africans in and outside Africa as home-based researchers. Our contribution advances the understanding of field dynamics in the production of local and cross-border knowledge on Africa/Africans.Item Item Racial discrimination in uncertain times: COVID-19, positionality and Africans in China studies(Routledge, 2021-03) Adebayo, K. O.Item Academic (Im)mobility: ecology of ethnographic research and knowledge production on Africans in China(CODESRIA, 2020) Adebayo, K. O.Since the emergence of China in the geopolitical and economic spaces of Africa, academics have followed China and African people moving in both directions and conducted on-the-ground, cross-border ethnographies. However, academics are not equally mobile. This auto ethnography analyses the intersections of ethnography, mobility and knowledge production on ‘Africans in China’ through a critical exploration of the contextual issues shaping the unequal participation of Africa-based researchers in the study of Africa(n)s in a non-African setting. Based on experiences before, during and after migration to Guangzhou city, I demonstrate that ‘being there,’ fetishised as ideal-type anthropology, conceals privilege and racial and power dynamics that constrain the practice of cross-border ethnography in the global South.Item I have a divine call to heal my people: motivations and strategies of Nigerian medicine traders in Guangzhou, China(2020-11) Adebayo, K. O.; Omololu, F. O.This case study explored the motivations and strategies of Nigerian medicine traders in responding to the health-care demands of co-migrants in China using observations and interview data from two Nigerian medicine traders in Guangzhou. The medicine traders initially responded to a ‘divine call’ but they shared similar economic motivations to survive, served predominantly African clientele and relied on ‘flyers’ and family networks to source for medicinal commodities between Nigeria and China. They were similar and different in certain respects and their undocumented statuses affected them in Guangzhou. The case study showed how survival pressures produced African health entrepreneurs in China.Item Africans in China: Guangdong and beyond(Routledge, 2019) Adebayo, K. O.Item Cohabiting commerce in a transport hub: peoples as infrastructure in Lagos, Nigeria(Sage, 2019) Xiao, A. H.; Adebayo, K. O.Based on a case study of Iyana Ipaja, one of the largest transport hubs with a spacious motor park and the most vibrant markets in North Lagos, we elaborate on the nuances of interactions between commercial actors and various forms of infrastructure in the spatial and temporal senses. In terms of materiality and mobility of their businesses, commercial actors are categorised into three types, shopkeepers, stallholders and hawkers. They have extensive interactions with the objects with which they are attached (shops, stalls and goods), the physical infrastructures (vehicles, roads, bus stations and motor parks), and ‘people as infrastructure’ – a term coined by Simone – including drivers, passengers, passers-by and government agencies. We suggest that a modification to the concept of ‘peoples as infrastructure’ should help to articulate interactions among differently positioned actors. We argue that the localities and mobilities of commercial practices manifest spatial conviviality among peoples as infrastructure. The temporality of their commercial practices is embedded in the urban rhythm of Lagos and remediates the flows of people and vehicles through the spaces of Iyana Ipaja. The focus of commercial actors provides a new perspective to rethink grassroots spatial politics of motor parks in Nigeria. Moreover, this case study critically engages the theory of relationality of ‘people as infrastructure’ in urban Africa.Item The role of mentoring in research ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa: some experiences through the CARTA opportunity(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Somefun, O. D.; Adebayo, K. O.Mentoring is important for improving capacity development in population and public health research in sub-Saharan Africa. A variety of experiences have been documented since Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) admitted the first cohort in 2011. However, the experience of mentoring opportunities in CARTA has not been studied. Our study focused on the perceptions, experiences and challenges of mentoring among CARTA fellows. We adopted a descriptive design based on data collected from the fellows using an online semistructured questionnaire. Out of 143 fellows in the programme, a total of 52 fellows from seven cohorts completed the questionnaire. Fiftythree percent of the respondents were females, more than half belonged to the health sciences while 35% were in the social sciences. Fellows received mentoring from CARTA graduates and experienced researchers in the CARTA network, but they also engaged in peermentoring with one another. Teaching, publishing, conference attendance and grant application were considered particularly important in mentoring, but mentors and mentees highlighted personal and social issues such as networking, work-family life balance, and managing stress and time, as challenges. There is a need for more formalised but flexible mentorship initiative in the CARTA fellowship to facilitate enduring relationships for career development.Item I don’t want to have a separated home’: reckoning family and return migration among married Nigerians in China(2020) Adebayo, K. O.The growing ‘Africans in China’ literature has documented the extent and extensiveness of flows from Africa to Chinese cities. However, return migration has not received much attention, and even less is known about the role of the family in return consideration. The article focuses on how married Nigerians reckon return and family in Guangzhou city using data from ethnographic observations and interviews with 25 participants. While the family is central to how married migrants think about return, the dynamics vary among the participants. Migrants whose spouses/children reside in Nigeria complain about being distant from their families and the challenge of unification and ‘absentee fatherhood’. Nigerian couples that live in Guangzhou as a family consider the high cost of raising children and the future competitiveness of their children as ‘China-educated’ as factors in return calculations. Moreover, despite living with their husbands in China, some Nigerian women desire to return to Nigeria to improve their lives, but they did not embark on a return journey to avoid family separation. Among Nigerians in an interracial relationship with Chinese women, the feeling of (un)belongingness resonates in their return consideration owing to poor experiences with access to residence permit and social welfare. While integration issues impact on return migration of married Nigerians in Guangzhou, the transnational practices of the men suggest that a return behaviour would probably accompany return consideration.