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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.

Sec. Higher Education

Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1621974

This article is part of the Research TopicReimagining Higher Education: Responding Proactively to 21st Century Global ShiftsView all 21 articles

The (Im)possibility of Doing Research in a Low-Income Country: The Case of Mozambique

Provisionally accepted
Gabriele  GriffinGabriele Griffin1*Marta  MendonçaMarta Mendonça2Ana Bela  BernardoAna Bela Bernardo3Natália  MagauaNatália Magaua2Isalia  Gabriel MateIsalia Gabriel Mate2Lenia  MapelaneLenia Mapelane2Samuel  Benjamim MatlombeSamuel Benjamim Matlombe2Juvencio  NotaJuvencio Nota3
  • 1Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
  • 2Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique
  • 3Pedagogical University, Maputo, Maputo, Mozambique

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This article centres on the difficulties of conducting social and life sciences research in a lowincome country: Mozambique. It draws on decolonial, professionalization and selfmotivation theory to examine, through qualitative, participative, discussion-based, bottom-up research with local informants carried out between December 2024 and February 2025, what factors inhibit the conduct of research in this context. The article suggests that it is less the self-motivation of the informants than contextual factors which make research difficult.These factors include the significant discrepancies between the abstract workload model of a 40-hour week and the actual experiences of working as an academic where many professional activities both take much more time than imagined in the abstract workload model. Many professional activities are, further, unrecognized in this workload model and, importantly, also unremunerated -important in a context where basic salaries are low and need to be bumped up by additional labour, either within the employing institution or, very commonly, outside. A further factor in making research difficult is sociocultural, a result of the hierarchist, patriarchal culture that prevails and which subordinates women and junior staff such that they are at the beck and call of more senior and male staff who can call on them at any time. This makes the planning of time to conduct research very difficult. All this is compounded by the poor state of the research infrastructure with very limited facilities and intermittent access to the internet, a must in the contemporary knowledge economy. The articles ends with a series of recommendations at micro, meso and macro level to remedy this situation.

Keywords: Conducting research, higher education, Mozambique, Research conditions, research contact

Received: 02 May 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Griffin, Mendonça, Bernardo, Magaua, Mate, Mapelane, Matlombe and Nota. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Gabriele Griffin, gabriele.griffin@gender.uu.se

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