This thesis focuses on the intersection of human mobility and technology diffusion in Africa. With Ghana as a case study, it looks at how the diffusion of internet access and use are influenced by international mobility. The research is based in the literature on the diffusion of innovations, international knowledge transmission, migration and development, and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). It begins from the hypothesis that international mobility may contribute to lowering barriers to internet penetration in developing countries by facilitating flows of resources, including equipment, finance, skills and knowledge. The research is based on four different datasets: a survey of the internet cafes in the North of Ghana and in Accra; an online survey of users in northern internet cafes; a network study incorporating internet cafe owners and managers in higher-value-added areas of the IT sector, and in-depth interviews with policymakers and donor organisations involved in ICT4D interventions. The data was analysed using a combination of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and network analytic techniques including visualisation, statistical analysis and qualitative analysis. The findings show that international mobility makes an important contribution to the base of adoption capacity for new technologies in poor and remote regions. It enables entrepreneurs and IT workers to address market gaps that restrict access to material and financial resources; by providing access to international circuits of knowledge and ideas which help individuals gain a foothold in the IT sector, and by facilitating local private-sector provision of the internet through internet cafes which serve the hardest-to-reach populations. The thesis concludes by suggesting potential entry points for ICT4D and migration policy in developing countries regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of ICT4D interventions, the role of the private sector in promoting internet usership, and the role of mobility in building adoption capacity in low-income areas.

This case study was conducted in Ghana to explore the arenas available for student participation in decision making in public senior high schools. In Ghana, students are considered stakeholders and collaborators in decision-making alongside parents, teachers, and community members. This role is of particular importance since their participation equips them with the attributes and skills needed for active citizenship. Student Representative Councils (SRCs) are established in all public senior high schools in Ghana and their representatives serve on committees and present students‟ views to school authorities. Their role as representatives is therefore very significant in promoting the student voice. The objective of this study was therefore to explore the key arenas available for student participation in decision making in four senior high schools in Ghana and the levels of their participation within them. In Ghana, no specific policy is provided for student participation in decision making even though the SRC is mandatorily established in each public senior high school. Literature on student participation in decision making in senior high schools is also scarce when compared to other African countries such as South Africa. The international literature on student participation in decision making stresses that participation is a right and that it must be given serious consideration. However, the perception some people have about students‟ participation in decision making is that students in senior high schools are not mature enough to participate fully in decision-making forums in schools. Consequently, opportunities provided for student participation tend to be limited to roles of supervision over student peers and fundraising activities. Arnstein‟s (1969) theory of citizen‟s participation which portrays a striking representation of power structures in society forms the theoretical basis of the study. Relating the theory to the school context, the study is conceptualized on Hart‟s (1992) ladder of student‟s participation and Backman and Trafford‟s (2006) Democratic Schools concept. Backman and Trafford (2006) assert that a school can be democratic in spite of its bureaucratic structures. Given that senior high schools in Ghana are hierarchically structured, with students at the bottom of the structure, these two theories provide an appropriate conceptual framework for exploring students‟ participation in democratic decision making. The study was conducted in four senior high schools in Ghana. The research participants included Student Representative Council (SRC) executives, non-SRC executives, staff members and heads of schools, purposively selected according to their roles in relation to decision making arenas in schools. The study was conducted in the interpretivist paradigm, adopting a qualitative approach, using interviews and focus group discussions. These methods were employed in order to gain in-depth insights into the interactions and perspectives of key stakeholders on students‟ participation in decision making in the case study schools. The findings of the study suggested that the forums provided for student participation were similar in the four selected schools. These decision-making forums included feeding, discipline, students‟ accessibility to school heads, school durbars and SRC general forums. The study however focused on decision-making forums of feeding and discipline as these were the areas participants mostly stressed on in their feedback. The study found that participation in the forums studied varied across the schools, with some schools providing more opportunities for students‟ participation than others did. In all but one school, students‟ participation in decision making appeared to be episodic, restricted and largely initiated by the school authorities. Furthermore, interactions between school leadership and staff were affected by power relations which also affected the level of students‟ participation in decision making. As contribution to knowledge the study notes among others that the interpretation and application of children‟s democratic rights is culturally determined and therefore vary across culture.

The study observed five introductory classes at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, to find out what academic literacy practices are being engendered and how criticality is being fostered through those practices. The results are intended to help both myself, as a teacher researcher, and the university to identify how students make the difficult transition from expectations of literacy at secondary school to those at university. I observed lecturers and students in their classroom environment for a semester (16 weeks); interviewed lecturers who taught the courses observed and conducted five focus groups, made up of eight students each, with volunteers from each of the classes observed. These interviews were replicated in two other public universities: the Universities of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where two and five lecturers respectively participated in individual interviews, and eight students each participated in focus groups. Finally, I triangulated the data in order to identify emergent patterns of lecturers' and students' experiences with teaching and learning. The data indicates that students need more explicit teaching of the basic literacy skills they are assumed to have. Most students in the study had difficulty comprehending academic texts. Additionally, students rarely attempted to read their assigned texts beforehand since they had little experience in anticipating what to look for or connect with in the text. Student writing is poor, as they have no opportunity to practice continuous writing. In order to address the literacy difficulties of these students, there is the need to pay attention to institutional and faculty engagement practices which promote student learning. A major area for improvement is in encouraging lecturers to teach using more explicit methods so that students can move from where they are in their literacy competence to where lecturers expect them to be. The place to explain to students what is expected in a discipline is within that discipline (Skillen et al., 2001), rather than assume that students will automatically see the shift in expectations for each field of study. Although there was substantial consensus about the importance of criticality in lecturers' aims for student learning, this was not adequately translated into literacy practices. Massification has led to a preference for multiple-choice testing which has removed the need to read and write for assessment, inviting students out of the intellectual dialogue that characterizes the various disciplines as they engage critically and thoughtfully with course readings (Svinicki, 2005; Carroll, 2002). The findings of this study indicate that lecturers have only adapted to the changed circumstances of massification in ways that mean that the critical acquisition of academic literacies is diminished. The impact of massification on teaching and learning has resulted in lecturers feeling under pressure to teach in ways that conflict with their personal ideologies. To foster criticality in students lecturers will have to learn new skills as what may happen with a group of 20 cannot be translated into a group of hundred or more. There are policies in place to enhance teaching and learning but few mechanisms to implement them. In the most important sense that the university in its policy statements and course outlines values critical thinking and deep engagement with ideas and concepts, the practices described by students and lecturers are completely in tension. In order to address the literacy difficulties of students, universities will need to actively support lecturers in teaching reform efforts so as to respond to pressures on them to increase their output while maintaining quality. Significant progress is likely to come about only if universities are willing to invest in resources that are needed to experiment with institution-wide changes.

What do we know about student experiences and perspectives of schooling in developing country contexts that are relevant to the ‘big debates' concerning Education for All (EFA)? This study, Being ‘Nobodies': School Regimes and Student Identities in Ghana, speaks to the question I pose. It explores the in-school experiences and identities of fifteen students in a rural Ghanaian Basic School using a critical anti-colonial discursive framework. The critical proposition underlying the study is that, aside from the longstanding problems we know of from research on schooling in developing countries, other problems “can be attributed to the dismal failure of the postcolonial state to change the existing system so that it reflects changing times, circumstances and social realities” (Dei, 2004:6). Unlike the dominant positivistic ‘etiology' of challenges to EFA, this school-based ethnographic case study provides strong evidence that persisting colonial school regimes – authoritarian forms of control and the reproduction of knowledge - are implicated in the educational experiences of students and the identities they negotiate within the institution. The three analysis chapters – Chapters Five, Six and Seven – contribute to the wider literature on schooling by specifically exploring students' perspectives on school regimes and student identities. Chapter Five discusses schooling as control. It highlights the more formal institutional regimes (authoritarian school organisation, school timetable as a management tool and the school code of discipline) that organise student experiences of schooling. Chapter Six focuses on the reproduction of knowledge through the delivered curriculum and performance modes of teaching and learning. Chapter Seven explores identities that students develop in relation to the practices discussed in Chapter Five and Chapter Six. It highlights that students see themselves as being ‘nobodies' such that their ‘best' agency is to use silence as an agentic ‘voice'. Despite Ghana's long attained independence, my thesis of the student identities of being ‘nobodies' asserts that, there has been little critical review of bequeathed colonial school practices. By practices, I mean specifically: authoritarian organization; discipline forms; and, performance modes of knowledge production that position students as ‘colonised subjects'. Based on the central analysis of this research, I recommend further research into the ways in which student experiences can inform the ‘big debates' central to EFA.

Ghana, like many developing countries, has fewer trained, qualified teachers than the number the country needs to realise the Education For All goals of quality education by 2015. The failure of Ghana's teacher education sector to turn out sufficient numbers of qualified trained teachers is as a result of numerous factors including existing Colleges of Education (CoEs) not having enough facilities to train the high number of untrained teachers (UTs) through the traditional campus-based model and difficulty of access to teacher education places. In response to these limitations, the Teacher Education Division, with the support of the CoEs, adopted an alternative pathway for initial teacher preparation known as Untrained Teachers' Diploma in Basic Education (UTDBE) in the latter part of 2004. This model of initial teacher preparation differs from the traditional campus-based model as the training is largely non-residential with limited provision of face-to-face meetings. After four years of implementation, key stakeholders, notably the top hierarchy of Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education, were calling for the extension of the programme by way of admitting another cohort of students. However, it was clear from my perspective as a senior professional involved in Teacher Education and with seven years of professional knowledge and experience in Distance Teacher Education that there was a lack of in-depth, theoretically-informed research into the programme, particularly with respect to the views of UTs themselves. The study was therefore designed using an in-depth case study approach to discover the views of UT participants on how the UTDBE had influenced their professional development and the quality of their teaching and learning, with a particular interest in the view of six UTs who were the direct beneficiaries of the programme. The research methods adopted were predominantly qualitative, and included observations and analysis of documents, a series of interviews with selected UTs, including focus groups and one-on-one interviews in which UTs reflected on videos they had taken of their practice. The findings suggest the potential of the UTDBE as a source for teachers (especially, those in underserved communities and locations) to learn, develop, update their skills and knowledge and improve instructional practices consistent with learner-centred approaches and professional practices. In addition, the opportunity that the UTDBE offers UTs to teach as classroom teachers while completing their professional programmes seems to have given them the chance to at least integrate and relate theoretical knowledge and experiences from CoEs to the practical realities in the classrooms and schools. However, the data indicated a number of challenges facing the UTDBE programme which undoubtedly affected the extent to which it promoted professional and personal development and learner-centred practices. These included (i) inability of the programme to take advantage of professional learning experiences that might be possible ICTs were introduced (ii) weak district, school and college collaboration (iii) the difficulties and complexities in managing relations between UTs and mentors (iv) tutoring during residential face-to-face meeting devoted to large group lectures (v) the over-loaded nature of course content and the difficulty and loaded nature of the content of some modules (vi) inability of UTs to make maximum use of college facilities (vii) other mechanisms of professional development such as cluster meetings and lesson observation not being used to their full potential (viii) largely non-recognition of the ‘wisdom of practice' of UTs and (ix) tensions in expectations between the different communities of practice of the different contexts of training and practice. The thesis therefore makes an important contribution to our knowledge about the development of alternative forms of teacher education in such contexts.

This thesis investigates socio-economic drivers and impacts of internal migration in two countries, Brazil and Ghana. The first empirical chapter analyses the choice of Brazilian workers to move out of metropolitan cities. This direction of movement is substantial in the Brazilian context and leading against standard models of rural-to-urban migration. I estimate the role of living costs and local amenities in the determination of the destination choice of metropolitan out-migrants. Furthermore, I quantify the returns to migrating out of a metropolis by computing counterfactual wages applying matching techniques. The metropolitan out-migrants prefer to move to smaller towns where their real wage gain is positive. They minimize the physical and social costs of migration by moving to closer towns within their state of birth. Living costs in big cities appear to be a main driver for workers to leave these, especially if they are low-skilled. In the second empirical chapter, I investigate the effect of internal migration on homicide rates in Brazil in the period from 2005 to 2010. I construct a retrospective panel of migration rates between municipalities and use local labour demand shocks in the manufacturing sector at the origins of migrants as instrument for immigration rates. An increase in immigration rates of 1% translates in an increase of 1.2% in crime rates at the local level. The effect is predominant in municipalities with historically higher homicide rates and there is no effect in locations with a large informal sector. While internal migration puts pressure on destination labour markets, these results suggest that it is the presence of a criminal or lack of a flexible sector that channel this pressure into negative outcomes. The third empirical chapter explores dynamic patterns of internal migration from rural areas in Ghana. With a new household panel survey collected in 2013 and again in 2015, I document that many households have multiple migrants moving at different points in time and for various reasons. Conditional on having had a migrant in the past, I estimate the effect of having a new migrant on the asset welfare of origin households. The findings suggest that due to prior migration experience and consequently lower migration costs for new migrants, there is no decline in welfare from having a new migrant.

In the south-eastern Volta Region of Ghana, a form of female religious affiliation to local shrines commonly known as trokosi, has been the subject of a campaign consisting of Christian-based NGOs and various government agencies that has successfully criminalised the practice and organised ‘liberations' and rehabilitations of the initiates. Protagonists of the abolition campaign argue that trokosiwo are illegitimately initiated to specific shrines based on an offence committed by another lineage member, acting as a perpetual figure of restitution. They also argue that the practice constitutes a form of ‘female ritual slavery' by translating the term trokosi as “slave of the gods” and arguing that the socio-economic status and social relations of the trokosiwo indicate their ‘slavery'. The highly publicised abolition campaign stimulated a counter-campaign, led by a neo-traditional organisation, that argued that the female shrine initiates are Queen-Mothers (rather than slaves), role-models to their lineage (rather than figures of restitution), and are socially privileged. Central to these contestations has been the figure of the fiasidi, particularly those initiated to shrines in one locality, Klikor. Abolitionists define fiasidiwo as being a variant of trokosi, despite some key differences. Those that contest this representation justified their position by highlighting the socio-economic position of fiasidiwo in Klikor's three shrines and pointing out the critical ways it differed from the representation of the Trokosi Slave. Members of the Klikor shrines also became political actors in the debates that ensued, by developing a close alliance to the neo-traditionalist organisation and creating their own organisation to network with similar shrines. This thesis considers the debates around trokosi and fiasidi at the national level and explores in detail the meaning attached to fiasidi and her position in the Klikor shrines and community. At its core, is an ethnography of the three shrines, their ritual specialists and initiates. I explore the way in which meaning is ascribed to the fiasidi, through narratives of the past, through the symbolism of key rituals and through the structured interactions between petitioners and ritual specialists. A concluding section then considers the intersection between these meanings and the contested terrains of religion in the debates about the Trokosi Slaves.

The thesis proposes to approach the idea of human rights as a specific truth regime on ‘the human' that contests those regimes of falsity which deny the essence of humanness on grounds such as race, sex, colour, gender, national or social origin. This theoretical proposition is supported by a case study of the deployment of the idea of human rights in the Gold Coast from 1945 up to Ghana's independence from colonial rule in 1957. As such, the study analyses how the concept of human rights, affirmed in the 1945 United Nations Charter and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articulated in the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, influenced domestic politics in one British colony in Africa. At the same time, the study highlights the way in which post-World War II nationalism produced some of the most important political changes affecting this region in this era. Relying on a first-hand investigation of archival and primary sources, the thesis scrutinizes the formulation of demands for the collective right to self-determination which emanated from nationalist movements, the evolving drafts for a bill of rights in Ghana's Independence Constitution and the debates on whether or not to extend the European Convention on Human Rights to the Gold Coast. The particular and disprivileged position of women in the colony is a subject of critical commentary throughout the thesis. By examining critically the emergence of the human rights idea, the study draws attention to the complex interplay of factors as well as actors that inspired a new-fangled notion of universal rights, while highlighting the way politics, including Cold War politics, contributed to define the subject of human rights in an ambiguous, incomplete but promising way.

Contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic (PC) Christianity has attracted scholars and practitioners of religions globally. This is because Pentecostalism in all its variations has been reckoned as the fastest growing brand of Christianity. In the particular case of sub- Saharan Africa, Pentecostalism has become one of the key religious features of Christianity since the late 1990s. As such, it clearly has a strong appeal to millions of Africans. Notwithstanding, the PC movement has also had its share of criticism based on its distinctive beliefs and practices, particularly in relation to the prosperity gospel and the abuse of power. In this thesis, using the Church of Pentecost (COP) and International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) as case studies, I examine the individual (personal) and group (collective) empowerment/disempowerment components in Pentecostalism in Ghana. Theories encompassing empowerment, social, cultural and religious/spiritual capital are reviewed within Pentecostalism in Ghana. The thesis central focus is on how the churches (COP and ICGC) constitute social, cultural and religious capital in their efforts to empower individuals and society. The study explores internal structures of power, polity and leadership in the churches, as well as their role in social policy, human development programmes, civic and public life issues. These were the main themes that emanated from the research. The findings show that the churches have made positive impact in transforming religious and social landscapes. They have also shown prospects in human development and brought awareness in the spheres of politics and civic responsibility. However, some beliefs and practices (i.e. gender inequality in church leadership, structures of power and authority, etc.) have affected aspects of individuals’ and groups’ empowerment. These insights come from the research analysis of the processes and outcomes of the churches’ practical work, for instance, theology/preaching, practical ministries, church projects in areas such as education, gender roles and practices, moral conduct and church discipline, trust and voluntarism. A case study research method involving textual examination of primary documents, qualitative interviews and participant observation was used to show the different perspectives from a representative sample of pastors and members of the COP and ICGC. While most scholarly works give a lot of insight to the developments of Pentecostalism in Ghana, their efforts have mainly focused on the founders and leaders of the movement as representative of their organisations. This has been useful to a point; however, this study has shown that such an approach muted the voices of the members of the churches whose viewpoints in the development of the PC churches remain significant. Thus, this study built-in views from both the clergy and laity of COP and ICGC. The thesis shows the present developments (life, thoughts and practices) of the PC churches in Ghana with COP and ICGC in context. It expands discussions on works previously written by Paul Gifford and Emmanuel Kingsley Larbi. Gifford and Larbi give an account of the developments of the churches with tremendous insight into their religious and social backgrounds. J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu further builds up the discussion on Pentecostalism in Ghana and draws attention to its contemporary forms and religious significance in Ghana’s religious life and society. The fluid nature of Pentecostalism requires constant updating and this thesis fills in some of the previously unexplained recent developments and on-going reforms within Pentecostalism in Ghana.

Recent years have brought a resurgence of state-led plans to expand access to electricity over African polities. Nonetheless, and in line with deep-seated patterns of infrastructural and general abandonment by the centre, very few of those plans have seriously addressed poor, distant, sparse and scarcely endowed peripheral regions. Those rare instances have received scant attention in the literature, despite their precious value to single out key interactions between national electricity regimes and core-periphery political linkages. Addressing that gap, this thesis pays attention to schemes of peripheral electrification to better understand how African states govern their peripheries. To that end, it scrutinizes two schemes of electrification: northern Ghana from 1989 to 2012, and southeastern Tanzania from 2004 to 2015. The thesis argues that in northern Ghana central rulers embarked upon electrification against the odds of geographical determinism, guided as they were by political motivations, chief amongst them the extraction of narrow electoral rents. By contrast, in southeastern Tanzania central rulers endeavoured to tap into the abundance of gas, governed by a determination to advance business models inscribed in the national electricity regime. Ultimately though, the central rulers in Tanzania were forced to re-politicize electrification to appease the deep local resentment caused by the very extraction of gas flowing toward the capital. Both cases thus illuminate varying trajectories in the interplay between national electricity regimes and core-periphery political linkages, that shaped the territorial strategies of electrification. In addition, this thesis also offers two revelations. One first revelation is that sub-national units exert significant mediations in the linkages between core and periphery, via alterations of distributional settlements. This goes against a stream of literature that pays attention exclusively to vertical strategies engineered from political rulers in the centre. The second revelation is that over the long-term electrification alters the political linkages between core and periphery. This squares well with the predictions of theories about the infrastructural power of the state. All in all, this work affords an embryonic analytical elaboration on the strategies of territoriality in the electrification of regional peripheries in Africa. From a political geography perspective, this helps to illuminate how sub-national electrification can simultaneously redraw and reinforce long-entrenched political linkages between core and periphery.