Women Academics From Ghana

"The opportunity to go elsewhere to see how things are done elsewhere and to apply that knowledge in our context is very, very important. It gives you a global worldview when you go abroad to study but yes they must come back to help"

"I am also the host for a science quiz program called the National Science and Math Quiz, for secondary schools in Ghana. You will be amazed at what happens in this program, haha. So this is a month-long televised Science competition where all schools come together to find out who wins for that year. The whole country comes to a stand-still, everybody is watching because everyone is affiliated in one way or another to a school. My purpose here is to make people understand that you don’t have to be a science student to enjoy sciences. The applications of science are reachable and everywhere around us."

"In 2011, I was a fellow of the International Women’s Forum Leadership program – the leadership foundation. I guess my application for this was strong because some of the activities I have done in education. This allowed me to go back to school – Harvard Business School and INSEAD, executive education programs. This was another opportunity for me to build my leadership skills and strengthen my ability to do the things I have been able to do and are still doing."

"I also love travelling. Before the pandemic, I would get a chance, maybe once a year, to visit a place I have never been to. Even my conferences were opportunities to explore, haha."

"Since 2017, I have been receiving all kinds of awards every year, haha. In 2017 itself I received the Impact Africa Summit award for education in Ghana; I am the Laureate for Ghana in education. It again has to do with my attitude towards promoting education in Ghana."

"I remember for the first time in a science class I had a chance to design my own experiment as opposed to following instructions from a teacher. All this was challenging to me at first but I adjusted pretty well. By the time I was leaving, my thinking was completely different from what it was when I had just joined."

"Haha, you know I recently got a chance to speak to a group of students who invited me to their session and my title was about sustainable success. I asked them what they considered successful. Winnie, I have received many awards and many people know me for the awards but all my awards have been received because of things I did for other people; I have never received an award for anything I have done for myself! So to me success is about your contribution to others; the sacrifices you make to make life better for others."

"I like reading, a lot! I read anything, and everything. I also like listening to classical music. I find joy in catching up with my friends and classmates from all over the world."

"In 2010 I received the best teacher award for sciences at my university – University of Ghana. This award was for the work I had done to help establish engineering plus the activities I do in my classes. Each of my classes has a course project because I want to change the narrative from just theoretical exposure in class to something more practical for my students. So my students know me for asking them to look for problems in their societies and come to class with them. They know that I don’t have all the solutions but I have a lot of experience; so if your solution is not feasible, I have the ability to point that out and give you suggestions on how to make it work."

"I have also had issues with my relationship! I was married, I am now divorced. Maybe part of it is about me being too focused and doing certain things which may not necessarily be healthy for a relationship."

"Overall, my idea has been to rise above all this! You know, once I know what my vision is, I tend to push all the negativity out of my way and keep moving forward. I choose to see my challenges as a normal part of life; something to learn from and make my way forward."

"The good thing is that I had been trained to be independent – one of the things I thank my parents for – so leaving home for the UK wasn’t such a challenge for me. But now adjusting to a new environment – winter time for example – was the problem. I had also been used to a certain way of teaching, you know the African way, haha! We don’t ask questions because whatever the teacher tells us is the solid truth."

"There are also certain unwritten but unrealistic expectations. Like if you are a female head of department then you are expected to be motherly. So your review of whether you are doing a good job depends on your ability to be motherly in addition to doing the job described for you in your appointment letter."

"Now here I was in a class full of interactions between teachers and students. In this school critical thinking was a requirement, we were supposed to have discussions on some of the most controversial topics. I had to find ways of forming an opinion and engage in the discussions because I took the idea serious that I was representing my country! My presence there had to matter."

"I would also like to tell this young girl that she is not alone; sometimes we feel like we are isolated, especially on this STEM journey but no, there is support out there. There are people who have been where you are, find a mentor; someone who has been where you want to reach and can speak positively into your life."

"I call on government to put in place sustainable policies targeted at small businesses in the country to help them grow."

"High school students would have to acquire skills in military training, agricultural training, digital literacy, entrepreneurship training, among others to succeed in the model for entrepreneurship training."

"I have worked on a lot of projects aimed at fostering an entrepreneurial mindset in students of the UCC, including university wide entrepreneurship course, Business incubator, among others."

"Remember I always say that if we have a lot of graduate unemployment, it is a national security issue. And therefore, entrepreneurship can come to the rescue."

"That a more friendly regulatory regime will expedite the formalisation of the economy and make it easier to effectively formulate and implement interventions for the industry."

"I admitted that the entrepreneurship sector was fraught with problems and recommend the creation of specialised agencies, financial support programmes, capacity-building initiatives, and policy reforms, to revamp the sector."

"I counsel Ghanaian youths to explore the rich opportunities in entrepreneurship to fight unemployment, that is the only solution to the graduate unemployment situation in the country."

"I call for the provision of infrastructure such as roads and electricity as well as providing the youth with managerial and entrepreneurial skills to thrive."

"I call for a genuine financial support programme to give support to feasible and credible businesses or ideas and encouraged people to save and partake in group funding before relying on other sources."

"They produce the products and sometimes they don’t even know where to sell it. We have the African Continental Free Trade Area. Can we support them to leverage it?"

"Graduate unemployment was a national security issue, and the country could fall on entrepreneurship to rescue the situation."

"I observed that entrepreneurs were faced with a plethora of challenges, including limited access to finance, inadequate infrastructure, skill gap, inadequate human resources like mentors and coaches and a limited access to market."

"Structural equation modelling using partial least squares was employed to examine the relationships between gender, owner-managers characteristics, strategic capabilities, and firm performance. Results revealed that the gender of the owner-manager has a direct influence on performance, firm resources, business owner's skills, personal values, business experience, and education. In addition, a partial influence was observed for business strategies, but not for owner-manager's age."

"Even though there are interventions like MASLOC and NEIP, I believe that the entrepreneurs and the small enterprises will also have to start something and save on their own to supplement what other organisations give them."

"The ability of the small business sector to contribute to economic development is influenced by the performance of individual firms, which is in turn influenced by their strategic capabilities. Strategic capabilities are determined by the owner-manager's personality and demographic and environmental characteristics. Owner-managers' personality characteristics originate from the prevailing cultural and socialisation processes to which they are exposed."

"In Ghana, women form the majority of operators in the small business sector, but their educational levels and managerial experiences are lower than those of their male counterparts. There are also gender differences in the socialisation of girls and boys in Ghana. It is expected that these differences in personality and demographics between men and women affect their strategic capabilities, and ultimately the performance of their businesses. This study accordingly examines the direct and indirect effects of gender on owner-managers' characteristics, strategic capabilities, and performance of small retail firms in Ghana."

"There is growing confidence among researchers in the ability of small businesses to play a vital role in economic development. This role is manifested through their contribution to innovation, job creation, and income generation. In transitional economies such as Ghana, small businesses comprise about 90 per cent of all registered enterprises and are recognised as a crucial and integral component of economic development policies aimed at sustained poverty reduction."

"A multi-method approach employing both quantitative and qualitative research methodology was utilised. Face-to-face interviews using structured questionnaires were employed to collect information from 674 owner-managers of small retail shops in the Accra Metropolis in Ghana. In all, 600 useable responses were obtained. In addition, focus group discussions were used to support the findings obtained from face-to-face interviews on issues relevant to business success."

"There are a lot of regulations they have to comply with. They are trying to make ends meet and make their businesses grow and so it sometimes becomes even difficult for them to remember all these regulatory regimes they have to comply with."

"Women form the majority of operators in the small business sector, but their educational levels and managerial experiences are lower than those of their male counterparts."

"Personally, I am looking forward to finding collaborators to help fund my research, and also to continue in science diplomacy, outreach and mentorship. I also look forward to working in a Science Policy Space in order to contribute to research in the field and also report on my experiences gathered along the way."

"First of all, Ghana is where I feel most at home; I grew up here. Secondly, there are a lot of scientists in the global North and therefore the global South needs equally credible scientists to stay, work and help solve their peculiar problems which research can address. I also serve as a mentor and role model to younger people who aspire to be scientists in future. An ambition like that looks more achievable or real when your role model looks like you and speaks like you!"

"I will say the main difficulty is around funding, which is very limited. At my university, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, there is funding between USD2000 and 5000 to compete for annually and there is no national research fund, so most funded projects are supported by external donors."

"I was always a curious child and used to ask a lot of questions about everything – from why birds sing and fly, to why it gets dark at night. I always wanted to understand how things came into existence. I was particularly active in science experiments in the primary school, and that led me to choose science for my secondary education and later university education. I guess it was a natural response to my curious mind and quest to know!"

"I wanted to experience new people and culture, and in Bergen I was in an environment where I had access to state-of-the-art equipment for my research. The other key benefits were that the programme was in English – and was fully funded. It was a great experience."

"A natural response to my curious mind and quest to know."

"Joy, pride and gratitude all in one pot. Its a litmus test to all my professional engagements and gives me the zeal to do more. This award is a huge endorsement of my scientific and professional endeavours. It is definitely going to further increase my visibility and offer more opportunities for growth and impact of my causes, including research on environmental contamination, mentorship and outreach."

"My greatest scientific inspiration is Marie Skłodowska Curie. She is the embodiment of both femininity and scientific excellence. Not only did she depart from the traditional women’s roles of her time, but she went on to become one of the world’s most renowned scientists. To date she remains the only person to have won a Nobel Prize in two academic disciplines – namely, physics and chemistry."

"Some think that all scientists in Africa do mediocre research or lack appropriate equipment. There is also a general lack of trust in data generated in Africa; I’ve witnessed this myself in the time taken to review manuscripts and the comments I’ve received when I was studying for my PhD in Europe versus the early years following my return to Africa. Now I’ve established credibility in the field, I don’t seem to encounter these biases as much."

"I am striving to improve public knowledge on the dangers associated with pollution by toxic substances (heavy metals, aromatic hydrocarbon, and so on) by determining them in environmental samples and evaluating the exposure and risk associated with them."

"Born to parents who are both educators, my siblings and I were surrounded by books and that inculcated in us an interest in reading, writing and learning very early. Growing up in a family of eight taught me the need for peaceful coexistence, free sharing of my gifts, caring for younger siblings and benefiting from the care of older siblings."

"Don’t allow negative thoughts from yourself or others, your ethnicity, location, environment or gender be a limitation on what you can achieve."

"I’d travel to Jupiter in the far future – firstly because I love the sound of its name, secondly because of its massive nature (it could accommodate around 300 times Earth’s current population), and thirdly because it is beautiful. I see a future where science has discovered ways of adapting to life on Jupiter – as well as methods to travel there more quickly. That way I could take my summer vacation from my earthly home in Kumasi in Ghana to travel to Jupiter for sightseeing and relaxation..."

"But when I'm thinking about starting a book, I want in those first few pages for the reader to get a good sense of who the main characters are, but also a good sense of the tension or conflict that is going to propel the book forward. So in those first few pages or the first chapter, by the time you get to the end of that chapter, you have a good sense of the characters, and you have a good sense of what is driving them, and what is driving the story. That's what I aim for."

"Tell the story you want to tell. It's a very simple message but it's really affected my writing in a positive way. I hadn't read any book on Ghana like His Only Wife so I couldn't look at anyone's trajectory of success and say ‘this person wrote a book like this so if I write it, I will have a similar response’. I just knew that this was the story I wanted to tell. You have to believe in the story and trust the book will find its readers and readers will find the book."