Day 125, Year of #Mygration: Understanding Migration Through Evidence Cafés

The Migration for Inclusive African Growth Network is an 18 month ESRC funded consortium project led by The Open University looking to understand how different migrant groups contribute to inclusive growth and enhance this contribution by identifying practice and policy lessons and co-designing knowledge exchange tools for migrants and the local actors they engage. Today, Dr Linda Oucho, Director of project partner organization AMADPOC, talks about their involvement and use of innovative ‘Evidence Cafes’.

Before I introduce myself, I must introduce the organisation that I currently direct, the African Migration and Development Policy Centre (AMADPOC). A pioneer research think tank, established in 2008, specialising primarily on understanding migration and development within Eastern and the Greater Horn of Africa. At the time AMAPDOC was established, there were few independent locally led research institutions that were focusing on migration in Kenya, especially looking at providing evidence to policy makers on migration issues affecting or impacted by in and out – migration.  It was set up under the leadership and expertise of the late Professor John Oyaro Oucho, one of the few national experts on migration in Kenya boasting a 40 year career on the subject, from east to west, north to south of Africa

I joined AMADPOC in 2012 after completing my PhD studies in the UK, specialising on international migration of African women, drawing inspiration from my own migration experience.  Since joining AMADPOC, I have been involved in a number of national, regional and continental studies and policy engagement platforms that have broadened my perspectives on migration flows both within the continent and beyond. While you can find commonalities across countries, the dynamics of how flows take place and how it impacts countries can be very different. My research has taken me from issues of diaspora to internal migration and development. Conducting research in Kenya and other African countries is varied, yet interesting. The theories and concepts help us to understand what we are looking for but the application requires some adjustment based on the specifics of each research site.

When the Migration and Inclusive African Growth Network started in March 2017, it was an intriguing and new concept for AMADPOC and me. We are representing Kenya as part of a larger multi-country team that is exploring the connection between migration and inclusive growth from the perspective of immigrants and diaspora - comparing knowledge and experiences in Kenya, Mozambique, Ghana and Nigeria. The consortium is led and guided by The Open University team consisting of Professor Giles Mohan, Professor Parvati Raghuram and Dr Anne Adams, among others.

Our methodology involves the use of ‘Evidence Café’s which are designed to help unpack knowledge and data from different sources to understand links between migration and inclusive African growth. The cafes are designed to support knowledge exchange, specifically to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners – to explore how research might inform practice and give academics access to practice-based insights. They are facilitated by an evidence-based champion – individuals at any level of a participating organisation whose role it is to initiate change through: identifying key topics, showing how research is relevant to the subject and, giving context of the relevance of research. Proceedings are kept informal to allow the free flow of ideas and one technique used to stimulate ideas are ‘discussion objects’ – a object matching the café topic intended as a focal point for provoking broad and innovative debate.    

For the Kenyan Café, we chose to focus on four sectors: agriculture, ICT, education, media and health. Over the course of the day our conversation allowed us to create a database of data collectors and the type of data they collect (i.e. stories, opinions, policies and research), who uses the data and for what purpose, and identify if data becomes knowledge that influences the government’s approach to enhancing inclusive growth from the perspective of immigrants and diaspora. In particular, sectors where Kenya attracts skilled migrants from across the globe. One of the key topics and questions that emerged for us was explore further is that while migrants have contributed to the infrastructural development of the country, how much of this growth can be deemed as inclusive?

The café was an opportunity to start a dialogue among all the project partners of what constitutes data and knowledge, and how it is represented in policy, in the context of inclusive growth. The MIAG network has also given us the chance to explore what migration and inclusive growth mean in the context of the other project countries, and to begin to extract lessons learned and best practices others have adopted.  

While evidence cafes has been an excellent tool in helping us to develop a deeper understanding of how migration and inclusive growth intersect in Kenyan and across the network, we very quickly saw value in using these cafes in other areas of our research, which we have already adopted in our study on youth, employment and migration in Kenya. We have found them to generate innovation – helping reduce the monotony of research procedures and creating a value chain between data, knowledge and policy, and as a result of being exposed to this technique through the MIAG network, we intend to apply it to many other areas of our work.