The continent of Africa is excluded from the inner edge of the global knowledge production structure, contributing only 1% to the world’s research output (Duermeijer et al., 2018). Using action research, the proposed project aims to devise a new model of collaboration with early career African scholars through a three-tier intervention. This includes individual-level mentoring for 20 early career scholars from Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda to enhance their publication opportunities (publishing at least 10 articles) as well as career prospects. At the journal level, we will collaborate with chief editors of major international journals to secure space for our participants’ articles. Finally, at the author-editor level, we will facilitate direct dialogue between African authors and chief editors to address systemic barriers to African scholarship in the publishing ecosystem.

Drs. Idia Thurston, Masi Noor, Peace Kiguwa, and Kevin Durrheim were funded by the British Academy-funded to lead this grant initiative on Decolonising the Publishing Ecosystem Through a Three-Tier Intervention to Benefit Early Career Scholars in South Africa, Ethiopia, and Uganda. The project's impacts neatly dovetail with the selected countries’ Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. SDG 9) as well as the African Union’s vision. A key objective of this intervention is to establish 10 collaborative networks, each tasked to prepare and submit an article for submission to top-quality journals during the grant period and a joint grant application.

The Decolonizing Socioeconomic & Mental Health Views about Refugees is one of ten collaborative networks. This network is a collaboration between Drs. Idia Thurston, Yassin Almaz (from Ethiopia), and Ronald Kabbiri (from Uganda) to address the colonial narrative surrounding refugees in the social sciences. By shifting the focus from an illness-based perspective to one that highlights wellness, resilience, and growth, we aim to redefine how the experiences of African refugees in Ethiopia, Uganda, and the U.S. are understood. This network proposes two primary project goals: 1) a systematic review of existing research on this topic; 2) a mixed methods study of African refugees in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Boston area. The team is currently working on aim 1.