Charles Center grant leads to research in South Africa, publication
Gazing out onto the South African horizon, vast rolling plains give way to great mountains, and the quiet blankets the rural expanse. At this altitude, only gusts of wind break the natural silence. “There was a beautiful stillness to it that I’ll always remember,” Chidi Akunwafor ’25 recalls.
Akunwafor traveled to rural South Africa in summer 2023 on a Charles Center Summer Research Grant as part of a four-member research team whose findings were recently published in Global Public Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice.
Field work involved long journeys to eight villages in Lurwaryizo, Mbashe Local Municipality in Eastern Cape Province. These trips alone posed challenges to conducting research of any kind.
“The ground was so eaten by erosion and had potholes so large I thought they were chasms,” Akunwafor said.
Akunwafor joined former W&M professor Iyabo Obasanjo (now an associate professor at the University of Maryland Graduate School), Mbashe Local Municipality Councilman Kenny Jafta, and Mbashe research associate Musa Zuma in investigating shortcomings and improvements to health access in the area.
As the research team first approached the village communities, Akunwafor said, they were met with the aroma of wood fire and smoking meat – a welcome motivation for the long day of interviews ahead.
For Akunwafor, the beauty of the Xhosa language, with its distinct pronunciations and clicks, gave texture to the research process, which involved in-depth interviews with community members.
Conversations about community health access were wide-ranging during the three-week research period from July to August 2023, but one was particularly haunting. Akunwafor remembers standing before the charred remains of Councilman Jafta’s family home, where he and his family had survived a standoff with the apartheid regime’s military police, who burned the house down.
“Only the chimney was left,” Akunwafor recalls. This, and a myriad other recollections of community members uncovered by the research team reveal the dismal state of healthcare in region— the result of a complex constellation of factors, past and present, including racial discrimination and violence.
In short, Akunwafor said, “The urgency of the research was clear.”
It is fairly typical, according to Akunwafor, that a clinic staffed by one licensed health professional, alongside several unpaid community healthcare workers, serves as many as three villages of about 3,000 to 5,000 people.
This lack of healthcare services highlighted the critical role of community-oriented healthcare in the region, including the support of generational knowledge carried on by traditional medical practitioners. Akunwafor’s research identifies ways to formalize traditional approaches to healthcare to increase access in rural communities.
Completing this work was arduous, but fulfilling, Akunwafor said, and publishing the results presented its own challenges.
How does undergraduate field work become a published academic article? Through collaboration, multiple revisions, and unflagging support by mentors such as William & Mary Scholars Undergraduate Research Experience (WMSURE) co-director Dr. Iyabo Osiapem, who encouraged Akunwafor every step of the way, he said.
Akunwafor, a kinesiology major and data science minor, was also personally enriched by the experience of research and writing, citing his own Nigerian heritage. His given name – Chidiebele – translates to “God is Merciful” from Igbo, and this identity anchors his passion for Afrocentrism.
What sustained Akunwafor and his fellow researchers during the months of long and bumpy rides to village communities? He described how music — house and Ampiano — filled the 4x4 with a distinctly South African blend of jazz and Afrobeat. The music prompted lively conversation for Akunwafor, an avid music enthusiast.
As a bassist, guitarist, and producer, Akunwafor views music as a fundamental to Afrocentrist expression. He co-created and leads Diaspora DJs, a radio show that provides an African diasporic space on campus.
With graduation on the horizon, Akunwafor aspires to a career in global health, in which he can pursue his passion for bettering the lives of others, facilitate Afrocentrist cultural exchange, and reach a broad community to continue his world-changing research.
