Evidence from the Margins: Researching Mental Health and Environments in Sub-Saharan Africa

Research at the Margins Tide
Written By Guest User

In this episode of Saltwater Reasonings, I am in conversation with developmental psychologist and developmental scientist Pamela Wadende, based in Kericho, Kenya. Our dialogue is shaped by a shared commitment through the Pan-African Mental Health Research Network, where scholars across Africa, the Caribbean, and the United Kingdom collaborate to advance community-accountable, methodologically rigorous mental health research.

Pamela reflects on her trajectory from classroom teacher to interdisciplinary researcher working across psychology, public health, and education. She describes how teaching cultivated a research disposition rooted in curiosity, attentiveness, and responsiveness to context. Indigenous education, she explains, is inherently holistic, integrating counting, language, care, and survival into everyday life, and this grounding continues to inform her methodological commitments.

Together, we explore how to design research that reduces power asymmetries, foregrounds lived experience, and honours community advisory structures. Pamela speaks candidly about negotiating the tensions between quantitative indicators and qualitative depth, about adapting consent processes across cultural contexts, and about standing in the middle, translating community knowledge into forms that are internationally legible without flattening or distorting it.

The conversation also turns to mentorship and scholarly lineage. Pamela names the researchers and communities who held her hand, reminding listeners that scholarship is never solitary. Research, in her framing, is ultimately accountable to participating communities and oriented towards human flourishing.

This episode invites researchers, students, and practitioners to reconsider evidence making as relational, negotiated, and ethically anchored practice.

What to Expect

  • A method centred conversation grounded in African research contexts

  • Reflection on moving from classroom teaching into interdisciplinary research

  • Insight into indigenous education as holistic and inherently multidisciplinary

  • Discussion of how to reduce power asymmetries in the research encounter

  • Exploration of qualitative and quantitative approaches without collapsing one into the other

  • Practical reflection on consent, community advisory boards, and ethical accountability

  • Honest engagement with the tensions of academic publishing across contexts

  • A focus on research as relationship rather than extraction

  • Consideration of mentorship, scholarly lineage, and responsibility to early career researchers

  • An emphasis on human flourishing as the orienting framework for evidence making

This episode is particularly relevant for researchers, doctoral students, and practitioners working across the Global South who are thinking seriously about method, ethics, and community accountability.

Resources

Sodi, T., Rantho, K., Matlakala, F. K., Wadende, P., Makhubela, M., Laher, S., Bojuwoye, O., & Maunganidze, L. (2025). Types and effectiveness of mental health promotion programmes for young people in sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, 12, e27. https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2024.153

Mulate, M., Wadende, P., & Ngalim, V. (2024). Forgiveness and reconciliation rituals practiced in North and Central Gondar zones of the Amhara region in Ethiopia. Families and Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/10443894241272154

Wadende, P., Shanu, S., Ngalim, V., Lodato, N., & Petersen, A. (2024). Theories of adolescence from a global perspective. In R. J. R. Levesque (Ed.), Encyclopedia of adolescence (2nd ed., Vol. 1). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-96023-6.00140-8

Ngyah-Etchutambe, I. B., Mengstie, M. M., Njungwa, M., Wadende, P., Gebreegziabher, E. A., Tadesse, E., & Rugaragu, P. (2024). Exploring impediments to human flourishing across the lifespan in six African countries. Trends in Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-024-00390-3

Wadende, P., & Sodi, T. (2023). Mental health literacy: Perspectives from Northern Kenya Turkana adolescents. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, 10, e40, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2023.25

Lombardi, J., McCoy, D., Lopez Boo, F., Huang, T., Matlhape, G., Mishra, S., Moussié, R., Wadende, P., & Yoshikawa, H. (2023). Unfolding opportunity: Advancing childcare to support children, families, and societies. Pediatrics, 151(Supplement 2), e2023060221O. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2023-060221O

Were, V., Foley, L., Obonyo, C., Musuva, R., Mogo, E., Pearce, M., Wadende, P., Turner-Moss, E., & Francis, O. (2023). Socio-economic inequalities in food purchasing practices and expenditure patterns. Frontiers in Public Health, 11, Article 943523. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.943523

Wadende, P. (2022). Establishing a culturally responsive network for ECEC practitioners and researchers in Africa. Africa Early Childhood Network. https://afecn.org/contact

Wadende, P., Obonyo, C., Musuva, R., Were, V., Mogo, E., Turner-Moss, E., Foley, L., & Francis, O. (2022). Foodscapes, finance and faith: Multi-sectoral stakeholder perspectives on local population health and well-being in an urbanizing area in Kenya. Frontiers in Public Health, 10, Article 913851. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.913851

Musuva, R., Foley, L., Wadende, P., Francis, O., Lwanga, L., Turner-Moss, E., Were, V., & Obonyo, C. (2022). Navigating the local foodscape: Qualitative investigation of food retail and dietary preferences in Kisumu and Homa Bay Counties, western Kenya. BMC Public Health, 22, Article 1186. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13580-4

Zeidler, H., Farrow, C., Jarman, M., Koteng, G., Simatende, B., Matthews, D., Mooya, H., Shapiro, L., & Wadende, P. (2022). A school closer to home: The role of mealtimes in fostering language development and aligning home and school learning in rural Kenya and Zambia. JMIR Research Protocols, 11(7), e36925. https://doi.org/10.2196/36925

Jarman, M., Zeidler, H., Shapiro, L., Clarke, R., Mooya, H., Simatende, B., Matthews, D., Koteng, G., Wadende, P., & Farrow, C. (2021). Qualitative accounts of changes to school-aged children's diets due to COVID-19 pandemic in rural Central Kenya. Nutrients, 13(10), Article 3543. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13103543

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Affirming Methodologies: Recognition, Dignity, and Doing Right by Participants