NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

wahu! is the first Ghanaian brand to produce electric vehicles domestically. The electric bike (e-bike) startup brings together local talent and experienced automotive engineers and designers from global automakers, including Audi and BMW.

In the talk, “How an E-Bike Startup is Looking to Change the Way Africa Moves,” Valerie Labi, co-founder and CEO of wahu! Mobility Ltd. will discuss how the business is unlocking new possibilities in low-emission mobility solutions, particularly in urban markets. By locally designing and manufacturing connected EVs for Africa and the wider world, wahu!’s value proposition includes ease of transport, a path to vehicle ownership and a gateway to sustainable employment through mobility services.

Labi is an entrepreneur who also served as Ghana country director for nonprofit iDE, International Development Enterprises, which focuses on market-based solutions in agriculture and water/sanitation. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the University of Southampton and her Masters of Studies from the University of Cambridge in Sustainability Leadership.

This event is open to the public and sponsored by the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan (WDI) in partnership with the African Studies Center at U-M’s School of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Attendees are encouraged to register (see below or click here) and submit questions in advance. Light refreshments will be served.

About the presenters: 2022 primary data collection grant winners Elizabeth Hentschel and Duncan Webb

SurveyCTO has proudly awarded Primary Data Collection grants to up-and-coming researchers since 2021. And in this month’s webinar, we’re excited to showcase the groundbreaking research of two of 2022’s awardees.

In addition to these two awardees for our 2022 research grant, SurveyCTO awarded partial grants to 10 additional researchers. In this webinar, we feature two researchers from that cohort: Elizabeth Hentschel, PhD in Population Health Sciences from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Duncan Webb, PhD candidate in Economics at the Paris School of Economics. Elizabeth and Duncan will both present on inclusive development research-related topics.

Elizabeth’s research project is called “Measuring Nurturing Care Across Contexts: A Pathway to Healthy Child Development and Protection.” It focuses on the development and validation of the responsive caregiving tool, a core component of the nurturing care framework and a predictor of early child development. In collaboration with the World Health Organization, Elizabeth validated the tool in the Naushahro Feroze district of Sindh, Pakistan. Using SurveyCTO, Elizabeth was able to provide evidence that the tool was reliable and valid, and then collect follow-up data a year and a half later with the ultimate goal of understanding how responsive caregiving mediates the relationship between socioeconomic status and child development in rural Pakistan.

Duncan’s research project, “Silence to Solidarity: Using Group Dynamics to Reduce Anti-Transgender Discrimination in India,” looks at ways that conversations can reduce personal prejudice and social discrimination against transgender people. Specifically, Duncan examines whether discrimination can be reduced by two types of communication about a minority: 1. horizontal communication between majority-group members, or 2. top-down communication from agents of authority (e.g., the legal system). To do this, he ran a field experiment in urban India that measures discrimination against a marginalized community of transgender people.

In this webinar, Elizabeth and Duncan will present findings from their current projects and explain how they used SurveyCTO for their project’s data collection needs to make an impact.

Come learn from two outstanding early-career researchers and be inspired in this webinar!

Time: 9:00 AM ET / 2:00 PM UTC