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Interviews as a Means to Understand (and Silence) Contemporary Africa and Its Voices

Interviewing is commonly utilized in all disciplines of the social sciences. Across Africa, interviews are undertaken in a variety of diverse contexts by researchers from within and without the continent. Although the challenges many face are context specific, they are certainly not Africa specific: from research design and preparation, to implementation in cross-cultural, extremely rural, or conflict-affected environments.
 In order to overcome these challenges, researchers must first recognize that interview data encompass much more than respondents’ answers to posed questions. Interview data, obtained in the process of organizing and conducting interviews, are the information collected before, during, and after the interview encounter; and analyses of the context in which they are pursued, including encountered difficulties. Together, these rich data further our understanding of contemporary Africa, as they do of other continents. It is rare, however, for published outputs to fully engage with the processes of preparing for, enacting, and interpreting the interview encounter. Such omissions limit our understanding of the research process and impede methodological transparency, thereby obscuring possible biases in data and the conclusions drawn from it.