As I prepare to enter my final year in the Faculty of Arts, it was important to me to find an internship that aligned with my research interests while immersing me in a professional setting in my field of interest. I am currently pursuing a degree in Honours Political Science, with minors in Environmental Studies and African Studies, and I plan on entering my first year of law school in the fall following my graduation from McGill. The internship I eventually embarked on with the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana (CDD-Ghana) fulfilled both of my goals. It also proved extremely useful in helping me identify the kind of work environment I want to work in in the future, notably helping me to solidify my choice to pursue law. CDD-Ghana is primarily a research-focused think tank that focuses on issues surrounding democratic consolidation, free and fair elections, conflict management, and social and political accountability in both Ghana and the broader West African region. CDD-Ghana also partners with several other NGOs and research groups both regionally and internationally to make policy recommendations and reach out to communities.
After three years of studying political science, I have developed a love for research. My internship allowed me to explore what it would look like to conduct research in a professional setting rather than simply academic. At the start of my internship, I met with one of the organization’s directors, Dr. Kojo Asante, who discussed some of CDD-Ghana’s many ongoing projects and focus areas. In this conversation, I was able to mention that I personally was interested in pivoting towards research focused more on national and international security issues rather than solely domestic politics. As a result, Dr. Asante assigned me to the Security Sector Governance Team, where I got to conduct research on topics I plan to explore further both in the last year of my undergraduate degree and beyond.
During my internship, I completed several tasks with my team and collaborated with a few others. My first task was researching and writing a draft literature review to introduce a survey conducted as part of CDD-Ghana’s project on Enhancing Citizen Participation in Border Security. I also assisted in the dissemination of the Afrobarometer R9 Ghana survey results by working on a summary of daily news stories for the period in which the survey was conducted. I then conducted another literature for a project in conjunction with The International Center for Migration Policy Development. This literature review focused on global and regional trends in migration as well as cross-border crimes, especially focusing on human trafficking. Simultaneously, I worked on editing a 50-page report that evaluated the methods and results of the “Enhancing Citizen Participation in Border Security” project.
Pushing me out of my comfort zone in terms of research expertise, I was tasked with developing a presentation on the role of regional election observer groups in strengthening the integrity of democratic institutions, which was to be presented by the chairman of the West Africa Election Observers Network (WAEON). This was one of the most interesting tasks for me as I learned how WAEON collaborated and shared knowledge with other regional observer groups. Notably, one of those groups was in Kenya, which held elections just this week. It was fascinating to see images of election observers’ role in that process in real-time. Lastly, I completed a draft literature review on the relationship between Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) and Violent Extremism (VE) both globally and in the West African Region. This last literature review posed a larger challenge, as the existing research on the topic is relatively limited. Nevertheless, these last two tasks are the ones which I felt helped me grow the most both as an academic and as an employee in a professional environment.
While I am not receiving academic credit for this internship, I look forward to expanding on many of the topics I researched when I begin working on my honours thesis. It was especially interesting for me to see what kind of field research NGOs are doing, as sometimes I feel like there can be a gap between that research and the research conducted by academics. Thanks to the generous donation of the Tania Zouikin Arts Internship Award in International Development and Ms. Zouikin, I was able to focus on this internship without having a full-time job. As a result, I was also able to study for and complete the LSAT in June, opening even more windows for my future academic and professional career. Additionally, thanks to the support of the Arts Internship Office both this summer and during my past internship in 2021, I was able to complete another successful internship with lessons I will carry with me through the rest of my academic and professional career.
