Godfred Adduow Obeng is a doctoral researcher in Development Studies at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä. He is working on a PhD thesis tentatively entitled “Organic Cocoa Governance and its Implication on Sustainable Production: A Comparative case analysis between Ghana, Ivory Coast and The Dominican Republic”. He investigates this topic from the perspectives of multilevel governance.

Current research on internationalization of higher education through North-South collaboration. Lead and participated in various collaboration projects with Universities from Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa and Eritrea.

My research has two main streams, both of which focus on international development and poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. First, I take a qualitative approach to understanding the “natural” course of entrepreneurship in Ghana; that is, how entrepreneurship happens in the absence of international development efforts. This research stream grew out of my frustration with seeing development organizations consistently teaching entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa in much the same way it is taught in Canada, or Finland. My second research stream focuses on collaboratively working with international development organizations to solve their pressing challenges. This generally involves using randomized field experiments to test designed solutions under real-world characteristics. The goal here is to bridge the gap between producing work that is theoretically interesting, and producing work that is practically important. Two ongoing projects of this nature are happening in Ghana and Tanzania.