Afrobarometer celebrates 25 years at Michigan State University
January 17, 2025 - Karessa Weir
In 1999, MSU Political Science Professor Michael Bratton worked with Robert Mattes and E. Gyimah-Boadi to merge three independent survey research projects to form the Afrobarometer, a survey program designed to give a voice to “ordinary African citizens.”
MSU, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, and the Center for Democratic Development of Ghana were core partners. Bratton served as executive director, and their first surveys covered twelve African countries.
Today, twenty-five years later, Afrobarometer has conducted surveys in forty-two of Africa’s fifty-four countries. It started its tenth round of surveys in 2025. Afrobarometer is now the largest, pan-African research network and organization studying public opinion on the continent. Since 1999, it has conducted over 330,000 interviews.
MSU is now an official support unit for the organization, which is a legal entity headquartered in Accra, Ghana, with a new CEO, Dr. Joseph Asunka. As Bratton, now a University Distinguished Emeritus Professor, put it, Afrobarometer has fulfilled its original goal of being “African based and African lead.”
On Dec. 4, the founders, supporters, and current heads of Afrobarometer gathered at MSU’s International Center to remember their past, celebrate their success, and look to the future of the program.
“One of the aspects of our strength is the people and the way we’ve engaged over the years,” said Dr. Carolyn Logan, PLS Professor and Afrobarometer’s Director of Analysis and Capacity Building. “We’ve done more than 280 surveys. We’ve talked to a lot of people across 40 countries. We’ve trained thousands of fieldworkers and set a really strong foundation.”
Dr. Boniface Dulani is one of those people. Dulani first started with Afrobarometer as a research assistant when he was an MSU PLS PhD student. Today, more than a decade after earning his doctorate, he is now Afrobarometer’s Director of Surveys.
“We started off in 1999 to give voice to African citizens because a lot of people were talking about Africa but not talking to the people of Africa. We’ve grown across the continent to give ordinary Africans a voice in politics,” Dulani said.
The group relies primarily on face-to-face interviews, employing translators so surveys can be conducted in the language of the participant’s choice. By using many of the same questions across survey rounds, they are able to compare the results across the countries and over time, Dulani said. The surveys now cover 80 percent of the African continent, while a goal of eventually covering all countries.
The surveys ask questions about citizens’ perceptions on topics such democracy, economics, elections, and trust in government. While the majority of questions remain the same, the survey has evolved to add other topics, such as the impact of COVID-19, child welfare, climate change, and migration. The next round will also include questions relating to sexual and reproductive health, access to justice, poverty, youth economic engagement, and globalism, said Deputy Director of Surveys, Anyway Chingwete.
“We need to remain relevant to Africa,” Chingwete said.
Once the research is analyzed and reports are written, the second part of their mission comes into play.
“The goal remains to disseminate and apply survey results to the decision makers, policy advocates, civic educators, journalists, researchers and ordinary Africans,” said Dulani. “We spend a lot of time to take the findings to the people who can use it.”
Afrobarometer is now very well-known throughout the continent and cited regularly by researchers and journalists, across Africa and globally.
“Our rigorous methodology is recognized as the gold standard for survey research in Africa,” Dulani said. “The data is free to use by all. The fact that we are African-owned and -managed is important to us, as well as the diverse and long-lasting partnerships we have.”
Another part of the Afrobarometer mission is education, including summer schools, emerging scholars programs, workshops, mentorships, and university outreach.
Many MSU PLS students have studied with Afrobarometer. Dulani is one of thirty-six MSU PLS graduate students who have spent time working with Afrobarometer in the last twenty-five years. Faculty and students alike have published books using Afrobarometer data.
The directors of Afrobarometer are incredibly proud of what they have achieved in 25 years and are looking forward to their future as a African powerhouse of data, research, and education.
“We’ve transitioned from our founding leadership to the second generation in the 2020s,” Logan said. “Many functions once managed by MSU are now managed by African partners. More than 70 partner institutions and their staffs have been trained in survey research methods, analysis, communications and management.
A panel including Bratton, Logan, PLS Chair Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz, African Studies Center Director Leo Zulu, and Titus Awoke, Professor and Associate Dean, International Studies and Programs for the College of Agriculture, Food and Resource Economics discussed Afrobarometer’s origins, as well as its future.
“MSU was Afrobarometer from the very beginning and provided key resources to help us start, and to to keep us going,” Bratton said. “At the same time, MSU has been very supportive by running graduate programs that make use of Afrobarometer data.”
Conroy-Krutz, who joined MSU in 2009, is a core faculty member in the African Studies Center and studies media and information, ethnicity, clientelism, and other topics in Africa. He was coming up in the field at the same time as the Afrobarometer was becoming more well known. It also drew him to MSU.
“You need partners who can help you. When AB was just starting, MSU opened a lot of doors for them. But as AB became more established, now it opens doors for MSU and scholars like me,” Conroy-Krutz said.
“We are an Afrobarometer family, and MSU is a big node of that.”
Zulu, a professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, has been teaching the geography of Africa since coming to MSU in 2006, with the goals of dispelling misconceptions about Africa, its land, physical economies, and governments,.
“Afrobarometer and MSU have created a model of building equitable partnerships,” Zulu said. “As we are moving forward, it is important to revisit and make visible again that everyone around the world recognizes this work. MSU’s footprint on Africa includes the huge impact of Afrobarometer. It has been an ecosystem for international involvement with MSU.”
