Ghana: Justina Onumah, the agricultural development economist passionate about mentoring young girls

When she started her studies, Justina Onumah had no mentor or role model. But once she arrived at university, she decided to give to others what she had not received earlier. For several years, she has been mentoring Ghanaian junior and senior high school girls and encouraging them to pursue studies in STEM, as long as they have passion for it. The agricultural development economist and Next Einstein Forum Ambassador in Ghana was recently selected as Mandela Washington Fellow.

When asked how she came to study agricultural economics, Justina Onumah starts laughing. “I never chose to study agriculture,” she says amused, “but rather one of my junior high school teachers, without even consulting me.” In junior high school, she would have never thought that one day, she would study anything in the sciences, she tells Africa Women Experts. Convinced that sciences were difficult, she strived to move to arts, but in vain. She finally gave up and ended up studying agriculture science which had Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and General Agriculture as majors. A trying experience but definitely was not an impossible mission, she confides. Without a mentor, she found herself making mistakes and had to face their consequences, such as choosing the wrong senior high school  after her junior high school. “I could have selected a ‘Grade A’ school but what I chose was the only school I was familiar with. If only someone was there to guide me…”, she says.

But today, looking back, Justina says she has no regrets. Her experience inspired her to devote herself to mentoring junior high school girls in her country, as well as helping them deconstruct misconceptions about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). “At first, I didn’t think I would be able to do science because of misconceptions about science and maths. When I got into science, I realized it was not a ‘demon’ as we have been made to believe. Actually, nothing in this world is easy, it only becomes easy because you dedicate yourself to it”, she says.

Today, this is the message she shares with high school girls in her country whenever she has the opportunity.

Creating links between policymakers and researchers

As a child, Justina Onumah dreamed of becoming a TV newscaster, then a lawyer, and later, a banker – “fancy careers” , as she calls them- but she ended up in the research field.“I chose to specialize in agricultural economics, because people said that it allowed to work in banks, which sounded appealing (laughs). At the time, I don’t even think research was even on my mind,” she says laughing.

In 2008, she obtained an undergraduate degree in agricultural technology with a major in economics and extension from the University for Development Studies. She then continued to the University of Ghana in 2009, for a master’s degree in agricultural economics, and participated in a semester-long exchange program between the University of Ghana and the University of Guelph in Canada, which allowed her to spend few months outside her country. An enriching experience that broadened her horizons, she says. After graduating with her Master’s degree in 2012, she was employed as a Research Scientist at the Science & Technology Policy Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Ghana.In 2014, as part of an initiative of the African Women in Agriculture and Research Development (AWARD), she benefited from a mentoring program, which allowed her to be mentored by a researcher at her institute. A life-changing experience for her career, she admits.

In 2020, she completed a PhD in Development Studies at the University of Ghana in collaboration with the University of Bonn in Germany and spent 6 months at Aalborg University in Denmark as a Visiting PhD Scholar of Innovation and Development Studies in 2018.

In 2019, she was promoted to a Senior Research Scientist at Science & Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Ghana. “At the Institute, our main mandate is to be able to contribute to policy development. We don’t just produce technical reports. We go a step further by writing various policy briefs for engagements with policy makers, “she tells Africa Women Experts.

Although research was not initially part of her career aspirations, Justina Onumah is now passionate about her work. She is particularly interested in building bridges between researchers and policymakers to enable these latter to develop evidence-based policies. Her interest came especially from an experience with the Development Research Uptake in Sub Saharan Africa (DRUSSA) project, which changed her vision of the relationship between researchers and policy makers. “We worked with the ministries of agriculture, environment, science and technology, innovation, trade and industry. It was very interesting. I realized that decision-makers were not hostile to research results, but it all depended on how we presented them and the level of engagments with them,” she says.

Having finally found her way, she thinks she has to help others in return. “Working with a mentor really makes a difference. I saw the impact of the mentoring experience in my life and I thought I should do the same”,she says.

Impacting the lives of Ghanaian high school girls through mentoring

It was in her church, she tells us, that she began to mentor young junior high school girls, shortly after joining the university in 2004. Over time, her small informal meetings have evolved into real support and advice sessions for young girls.

From these mentoring sessions, she remembers beautiful stories of girls, such as this young girl who left school and after almost 7 years, unsure of what to do with her life, attended one of her mentoring sessions, she tells us enthusiastically. “She said she wanted to do something, but didn’t know what. She came from a broken home like me. She thought there was no hope for her, »she says. After several meetings, the young girl was able to regain hope, Justina rejoices. Thanks to her support, she should resume her studies next September and enroll in an undergraduate program.« I came from a hopeless background and so it is time to give hope to people from backgrounds like mine because it is possible to be great if you work hard at it and tapping into the grace of God », she says.

In addition to mentoring them, Justina raises awareness about STEM careers among junior and senior high school girls, by inspiring them with the success stories of women scientists, by showing them the practical side of science…, as she did during the STEM week that she organized last May as the ambassador for the Next Einstein Forum in Ghana. “We had about 65 high school girls who had no idea of the practical aspects of science. All they knew was what they were taught in school. We did a robotics workshop. At the beginning of the session, only 15 out of 65 wanted to study science. But in the end, 80% of them wanted to go into STEM,”she says.

Today, Justina Onumah wants to help more junior and senior high school girls by launching a mentoring platform. A project she hopes to implement after her current experience at the University of Delaware in the USA, as part of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, for which she was selected among 32 young leaders out of about 4,000 applicants in Ghana. A program aimed at building the capacity of young African leaders in leadership to have more impact in their communities.

Danielle Engolo