Suppose your progressive organisation is handed a task: write a country conjuncture report for a West African nation.
This country has been independent for over sixty years. It has lived through military coups, structural adjustment, debt default. Its main exports are still unprocessed primary commodities—cocoa, gold, timber—much as they were when the colonisers left. A new government has just taken office, facing a thicket of problems. Your organisation needs a report that answers: what is actually going on in this country? What is the balance of forces? What might happen next?
Where do you start?
What happens when technical barriers no longer constrain what a researcher can ask? A story about data, imagination, and the research questions we never dared to frame. Read More