Every other Monday, Africa Knows brings you conversations with African(ist) scholars, teachers, and thinkers who talk about their own work and the knowledge revolution taking shape all over the African continent. We are a collaborative platform, with co-hosts calling in from different locations - go to africa-knows.captivate.fm for more details. Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana are our first ports of call, but we aim to expand our reach over time. Interested in collaboration? Contact us at africaknowspodcast@gmail.com.
Music: Wholesome by Kevin MacLeod https://bit.ly/3sscIwc
Elisabeth Wamuchiru on Urban Informality, Research Impact, and Mentorship
Today we're listening to Dr. Wamuchiru, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and an urban and regional planner.
In this episode, Dr. Wamuchiru tells us how to prevent research papers from accumulating dust and being left for referee points, why informality is a key research topic for the future, how to deal with classes with Kenyan undergraduates fresh from high school, why young people should still become academics and more.
1 Jun 2026
Musyimi Mbathi on Why the Future Is Urban
In this episode of Africa Knows, we speak with Dr. Musyimi Mbathi, Senior Lecturer in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Nairobi.
Drawing on over 20 years of experience across academia, government and the United Nations, Dr. Mbathi reflects on what it means to train the next generation of urban planners.
He discusses the importance of exposing students to real-world urban complexities, grounding research in society’s needs, and embracing participatory approaches to planning.
From informality and resilience to governance and economic development, this conversation explores why the future is urban, and why African cities need planners who are ready for it.
18 May 2026
Ibrahim Ado Kurawa on Traditional Learning and Modern Education
In this episode, Gaddafi is in Kano, Nigeria, speaking to Ibrahim Ado Kurawa, a prominent northern Nigerian writer, historian and Islamic scholar.
Their conversation is about history, knowledge and power in northern Nigeria. And it gives us a glimpse of the rich tradition of scholarship and education in Islamic West Africa, what Kurawa calls the Sudanic tradition, and its interactions with colonialism and more recently, the wider liberalization of knowledge. Kurawa gives us a sense of what the older systems of Islamic learning in Kano were like, in a way, how he experienced them when he was a young man.
He sketches out how they are changing and what may be lost as scholarship moves away from the deeply immersive forms of traditional learning to a faster, more fragmented and more instrumental system of modern education.
But the conversation also turns to why young Nigerians should know their history, how northern Nigeria continues to struggle educationally, why skills training alone cannot solve unemployment, and how the role of traditional leaders in governance has changed under the democratic Nigerian state
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