Navigating the complexities of qualitative research often requires more than just a solid methodology. While conducting interviews in and around the bustling Agbogbloshie market in Ghana’s capital Accra, I encountered challenges familiar to many qualitative researchers – earning trust and building rapport. Coming from a different cultural background, my focus on chop bars, an integral part of Ghanaian culture, added an extra layer of complexity to the process. Thankfully, I was able to partner up with Isaac, a fellow student researcher from the University of Ghana. His understanding of the community, and our shared immersion in the local food scene, were crucial in gaining meaningful insights.

I traveled to Ghana as part of an ETH4D Pilot Grant to investigate the barriers to unionization in the informal food service sector as perceived by government officials and union stakeholders. We hoped that using qualitative research methods would allow us to go beyond surface-level observations. The overall aim of my thesis was to understand how collective action could be leveraged to maximize the bargaining power of these workers, ultimately contributing to a more equitable and just labor landscape in Ghana’s informal food service sector. Through our partnership with the University of Ghana and the Informal Economy Workers’ Forum Ghana (INFORUM), I was fortunate enough to interview participants from diverse backgrounds. The initial introductions, as facilitated by our partners, provided me with invaluable insights into the complexities of unionization in the informal sector. However, as I sought to expand my network beyond these initial contacts, I encountered significant challenges. The personal connections that had proven so valuable early on began to fade away, and I found myself relying more on cold calling potential interviewees. This approach, however, often poses a challenge in qualitative research because it lacks personal rapport and trust.

Collaborating with Isaac, my fellow student researcher from the University of Ghana, was a key turning point. Having earned his bachelor’s degree, Isaac was completing his national service at the research group we were partnering with. Together, we set off to conduct interviews and investigate the informal food service  sector, where his understanding of local customs, social dynamics, and communication styles proved invaluable. He enabled interviewees to express themselves authentically in one of their local languages, Twi, helped me understand the broader cultural context of the issues we were exploring, and explained historical tensions, social hierarchies, and unspoken rules that influenced how people perceived our research. For instance, one day, as we navigated the Agbogbloshie market, he pointed out various produce, taught me about their uses and traditional preparations, and explained the importance of greeting the sellers when looking at their products to show respect.

I learned other ways to demonstrate my respect and appreciation: through my new-found love for Ghanaian dishes like Gobe or Bofrot. Because food is not merely sustenance, but also a way of life, a form of expression, and a symbol of community and pride, sharing a meal can become a bridge to building deeper connection. With interviewees, sharing a meal often led to laughter and lighthearted exchanges, and then to open conversation. Beyond the culinary connections, I found that engaging in everyday activities provided invaluable insights. Whether it was attending a local soccer game or simply topping up my sim card, these experiences allowed me to observe firsthand how people interacted, communicated, and navigated their daily lives.

As a student researcher, I am grateful for our partners who opened doors for me, and for Isaac, who helped me navigate and expand our network, all while sharing his country and culture with me through his eyes. My time in Ghana made clear to me that shared experiences – whether through a meal with interview partners, passionate discussions about why Ghanaian Jollof is superior to its Nigerian counterpart, or simply navigating the markets with Isaac – can transcend cultural barriers and build lasting connections. This is where the power of qualitative research reveals itself. Without these moments of active engagement, picking up on the nuances of personal experience, it would have been impossible for me to develop a deeper understanding of the complexities of Ghana’s informal food service sector.

Brazil is typically a leading coffee producer. The region where I grew up produces around 25% of the world’s coffee. But it wasn’t until I left the place that I came to understand the impact (cultural, social, economic, environmental) of this activity on the planet, in the nation, and in my personal life. 

Coffee has been traded as a commodity for centuries, and is responsible for shaping relations all around the world. The Coffee Paradox (Daviron and Ponte, 2005) is the name given to the phenomenon in which the price of coffee on the global market decreases, while the price of coffee available to the end consumer rises. The literature agrees that devaluation of coffee and its producers in the Global South and inflation in the Global North occurs mainly for two reasons. Firstly, higher value-added products are available in high income countries and secondly, services that exploit the intangible attributes associated with coffee have more profit. In this sense, specialty coffee blends from different parts of the world and the cool ambience of a cafe serving “direct to consumer” beans are really becoming a trend. 

For the approximately 25 million people around the world who make a living from coffee (Fischer, 2017), most of whom are small producers, this inequality of income potential between production and end consumption is highly relevant. Although coffee growers infuse their products with their own cultural, subjective and immaterial attributes, they only get paid for the material aspects of their labour. These intangible qualities are overshadowed by the distribution channels, which now value subjective aspects that favour them. Producers’ immaterial qualities end up getting lost in the complexity of the value chains. What makes it possible for coffee sellers in the Global North to profit from the same intangible qualities that are considered irrelevant in coffee’s value when it comes to producers?

In search of answers, I went to Switzerland to investigate what the end consumer of specialty coffees is familiar with at the time of sale. In order to immerse myself in European consumer culture, during my stay I loved to spend my mornings studying at coffee shops, drinking specialty coffees from different parts of the world, trying to understand their unique, “valuable” qualities, as well as the ways they are marketed to the public.

Although Brazil is the country that produces most of the coffee in the world, interestingly, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to drink single origin Brazilian coffees in Zurich. I discovered that most coffees are sold in blends, mixing nationalities and sensorial profiles. However, I did find Brazilian bags at all the coffee roasters I visited. This observation helped me develop my hypothesis that the coffee transformers try hard to make the drinkable coffee unique, while at the same time having backups with similar characteristics, in case of climate extremes and other environmental or financial problems that lead to shortfall in acquisition of a certain coffee bean. In this sense, sellers in Zurich maintain the flexibility to substitute one producer’s coffee for another, thus undermining the producers’ market power. With this model, the control that producers have over the material means of production is no longer crucial to accumulation of capital. What matters more in this context is control over the channels of distribution and the means of symbolic production (Fischer, 2017).

The materiality of the Coffee Paradox is also observable in the number of coffee machines and different types of processing available for purchase in Swiss supermarkets, in stark contrast to the options common in Brazil. Although Brazil is the second largest consumer of coffee in the world, elaborate coffee machines are rarely found in private homes and are not sold in supermarkets.

At the same time that the Global South is undervalued in matters of production and distribution, it is also undervalued as an innovative protagonist in academia. Inequalities in the distribution and valuation of resources such as education, information and culture are the background of global power asymmetries, which consecutively impact individuals and their daily practices. At the Agroecology Europe Forum in Gyongyos, Hungary, one presentation highlighted the importance of Latin America, especially Brazil and its public policies, in promoting agroecology at the national level. But in contact with other colleagues, I discovered that I was the only Brazilian researcher present – and not for the lack of qualified, motivated and interested academics in my country.

Coffee is far from the only commodity subject to extreme inequality along the value chain. Our current food system is failing. It desperately needs diversity, inclusion, transformation and innovative practices. It is essential that non-hegemonic actors are recognized and take up spaces in this discussion. We are able to contribute to the debate with critical thinking and in matters of decoloniality and intersectionality. Learning can and should go both ways: the widespread success cases of social participation and social movements in support of agendas such as women farmers, agroecology, food safety, urban agriculture and environmental justice can inspire European practitioners and thinkers. 

Many of these innovations from the Global South are technologies that can “add value” in agrifood products, like institutionalized participative certification, which decreases the costs of audit for smallholders as they get independent from third parties, or beans being valued according to the specific characteristics of the soil, climate and cultural know how of the land it is harvested, resulting in geographic indicators.

Whether through drinking a Brazilian coffee in Switzerland, producing articles in the lab or discussing Political Ecology in the classroom, my research confirms that the Global South is full of information, technologies and knowledge to be valued and appreciated, capable of reducing the asymmetries of power in the world. The journey doesn’t end here, as there is a lot of work ahead of us to shed light on the existing capacities of the Global South, in the coffee sector and beyond.

I would like to thank ETH4D for this empowering experience and thank Pr. Dr. Johanna Jacobi for the opportunity and all the support. 

“I could tell you what every tree is on this land, when it flowers and when it fruits. Our family has lived here for over a hundred years.

But we do not have a piece of paper saying this is our land.

The developers come in with their plan and all I can do is listen. Without a registration, it does not matter to the developers that I can name every tree, they still tell us that this is not our land. They are the ones with money, they can pay for it. I cannot. 

So who will listen to us?”

In the background of this voice recording is a rhythmic metallic pummelling. Torrents of rain. Recorded during the height of the rainy season in Southeast Asia, we are listening to remarks from a rural community in Laos. Together with another ETH master’s student, Jasmin Krähenbühl, and our translator, Khammeun, the three of us have been visiting remote villages in Laos to conduct focus groups for Jasmin’s and my master’s theses. Altogether, Jasmin and I will be in Laos for two months.

As part of an ETH4D pilot project, together with our research partners in Laos, we are investigating landscape change and the policymaking processes around it. We are here to gather data to be analysed and published in scientific publications.  All our experiences, conversations, and findings will be distilled systematically and objectively into the “results” sections of these publications. This objectivity, though necessary for impartial scientific reporting, often also simultaneously hinders the expressiveness that makes these conversations so gripping. 

The voice recording mentioned above came from our focus group conversations in the strikingly beautiful and highly touristic district of Vang Vieng. There had been a recent zoning proposal by foreign investors that, if approved, would convert the core 75 km² into a “high-end adventure resort” (the area is roughly equivalent to the entire city of Zurich). This area would include 22 villages, one of which our interviewee belonged to.

Despite all 22 villages disagreeing with the proposal and each village writing to the Lao national government, they had received no replies, and continued seeing increasing numbers of foreign developers in the area. Villagers’ main concerns were not the development, but the lack of recognition of ownership and the resulting low compensation for their main (and often, only) source of food and security — their farming fields. At the same time, they were worried that their skills and education would not be enough for the jobs the foreign investors had promised to create.

These conflicts and stories were not directly reported in our master’s theses. Instead, for this specific conversation, in my thesis, I note how “residents reported that commercial development often encroached on their own lands, while having little means of providing feedback or opposition to these land use changes.” Clean and neutral, the process of systematic distillation expected from academic publications leads to writing that is objectively factual but remains sterile.

In these neutral tones, it is hard to convey the sense of urgency, desperation, and sliver of hope residents had when talking with us. They mentioned their hope that by talking with us – young, foreign researchers – we might help amplify their voices. It is hard to hear this and know that ultimately, we as young researchers, will leave, write reports and publications, and in these, we describe what we have seen in our “discussions” sections. The question comes back to: what are we doing for the people that live there?

The answer is that, hopefully, these publications contribute to a growing body of work regarding participatory policy-making, and the need to include and listen to local, often indigenous communities. From mounting research and pressure that eventually reaches the ears of policymakers and developers, policies could be drafted and implemented.

But policymaking processes take time. And in many places (Laos included), it is hard to say if this process for participatory decision-making will ever take place. So then what? More and more social movements are no longer waiting for government or corporate action, but rather insisting on change from the ground up. Time shared with these communities helped Jasmin and I understand many of their concerns. Perhaps in this way, our publications act as witness statements that build the evidence on which a demand for change can grow.

In the meantime, we stop the recordings, finish our publications, close our tabs, and eventually get acknowledged for the academic achievements we have garnered. But who has truly benefited? How can we bring the stories behind the research to the forefront? How can I look someone in the eye when they ask “who will listen to us?” and honestly reply “we will, and we hear you”?

ETH4D seed grant

Yilin Huang’s master’s thesis

Jasmin Krähenbühl’s master’s thesis

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” – Abraham Maslow, 1966

My hammer was a piece of software that I developed during a semester project at the Global Health Engineering research group. It recommends schedules for emptying the waste containers around the city of Blantyre, Malawi’s second largest city. And thanks to an ETH4D Research to Action Grant, I could travel to Blantyre to gather data for the software and discuss it with the Blantyre City Council. I was hopeful that it would prevent some plastic from ending up in a river, or pests from feeding on overflowing organic waste.

However, every meeting and interaction with stakeholders on site convinced me of one thing: the model I had developed would not work. What I thought was an issue that could be solved with better scheduling turned out to be a multi-faceted problem involving communications, information management, finance, but also politics and personal interests. For instance, the main bottleneck to waste collection is not always a lack of vehicles per se. Some trash compactors and skip handlers are donated by development agencies. However, these overcomplicated machines break down quickly, and the city council cannot afford to repair them. Beyond that, fuel allowances for the functioning trucks are not managed by the public health department, and are severely constrained.

Instead of pushing a solution I developed in an office in Zurich, I took the opportunity to learn from our project partners and residents, and understand and report on the more important issues behind Blantyre’s waste management challenges. Beyond looking at the hard statistics, I looked at how the organization works, how the decisions are made, and what strategies are being implemented.

Before leaving, I also delivered some products that could actually be useful for the waste collection managers. This includes a map of the public waste infrastructure and distances between the different points of interest in the city. Hopefully, this is only the first iteration of a useful, people-centric information management system we will develop with Blantyre City Council.

What was meant to be a neatly wrapped-up project has shifted into an effort to inform decision-makers in Blantyre and at the World Bank on how to best invest in waste management in Malawi’s economic capital. And while my hammer was not the right fit, we are delving into the broader Global Health Engineering toolbox to work towards appropriate solutions to Blantyre’s waste challenges.

For my master’s thesis in agricultural sciences, I went to Ghana to investigate the turnover of middle managers in an agrifood company exporting dried fruits and other products. The company was looking to answer why middle managers were leaving their current positions, even though export-oriented agrifood companies are, in general, known for their high standards in terms of wages, employment conditions, and/or job satisfaction. However, research suggests that higher-skilled workers might be better off than lower-skills workers.

To date, research on employee turnover/retention has mostly been conducted in established sectors such as health care, finance, and education, but not in the agriculture and food sectors. Since I had little experience in Human Resource Management so far, the project allowed me to gain an understanding of a topic that was new and exciting to me.

To gain deeper insights into the experiences and motivations of middle managers, I conducted a case study that involved in-depth interviews and observations within the company, with support from the Human Resources (HR) team. As the research unfolded, I found turnover reasons to be linked to salaries, benefits, promotions, and a lack of appreciation, as new agrifood companies offered higher salaries and better conditions. I also discovered a discrepancy in the perception of promotion fairness between upper-level management and middle managers. One interesting observation was a notable gender disparity in participation in our study, as men were more forthcoming, while women appeared less inclined to engage in open discussions.

Collaborating with the HR team not only provided valuable insights into the inner workings of the company, but also allowed me to immerse myself in Ghanaian culture. The busy HR office was a good opportunity to connect with people and to cheer the Swiss and Ghanaian teams during the football World Cup 2022.

One of my HR colleagues, Dorcas, who proved to be a wonderful travel guide, introduced me to cooking Ghanaian recipes and the culture of the Asante, a part of the Akan ethnic group in the middle of Ghana. We also visited the so-called “slave castles” and forts along the coastline, which was a very emotional experience. These forts were built by European traders during the colonial period in Ghana and were used to hold enslaved people before they were forced onto ships to be transported across the Atlantic Ocean.

I also had the chance to explore Northern Ghana, especially the Mole National Park. There, a friend, Fuseini, whom I met at the company, also proved to be a great travel guide. We could admire the Larabanga Mosque, experience the making of shea butter, and observe animals in the national park, such as elephants and antelope.

Overall, my master’s thesis journey in Ghana was a wonderful experience. Collaborating with the HR team, conducting my research, and traveling around the country gave me a deeper understanding of the rich Ghanaian culture.

At CellX Biosolutions, we aim to address the unprecedented damages caused by industrial pollution on our environment, human health and biodiversity, resulting from the failure of current expensive, underperforming or environmentally harmful pollution treatment methods. There is an urgent need to fill this technology gap to restore contaminated environments and help a societal transition towards sustainable industrial processes.

To do this, we are recruiting nature’s master recyclers: bacteria and their degradation enzymes. We are using a novel technology to capture in extreme environments bacteria with the strong metabolic capacity to degrade specific pollutants, such as microplastics, pharmaceuticals or pesticides. This catalog of functional biodiversity will allow us to deliver highly performant cocktails of bacteria for targeted degradation of hazardous chemicals in industry, and eventually, directly in situ.

A few weeks ago, we participated in this years’ SDG Pitch-Event at the ETH Student Project House. The SDG Pitch-Event is a yearly event that is for all students and researchers at ETH Zurich working on innovative projects that contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It enables synergies with other projects, inspires fellow researchers and provides a chance to win a mentorship for projects on top of a cash prize. It is co-​organised with ETH Student Project House, ETH Entrepreneurship and ETH4D.

The audience rewarded our project with the “best pitch”, endowed with CHF 500.-

What does the win mean for us?

The SDG pitch competition at the Student Project House provided great positive feedback. Obtaining the audience vote was a great validation of our vision and really showed us that the public feels deeply concerned by this huge environmental issue, further supporting the need for alternative bio-based pollution treatment and that they have a place in the market at the moment. It was also the first public competition that we were taking part in and it felt amazing to receive such enthusiasm from the audience for our endeavor.

How will we move forward from here?

We are currently working on our non-industrial proof of concept in the lab, while also continuing to improve our technology. We are also planning to apply for funding such as the Social Impact Pioneer Fellowship* by the end of the year, which would enable us to bring our startup to the next level.

What are our future plans?

We are building a catalog of specialized bacterial consortia for commercialization as cost-efficient, highly performant, and sustainable biodegradation solutions. 

The ongoing climate crisis is creating an urgent need for greener alternatives to pollution management and to reach pressing environmental goals. Our novel biosolutions will facilitate the transition to sustainable industrial processes and the restoration of our environment. Yet, in the future, we expect also to be able to use our method for pollutants and waste products for upcycling, by being able to transform these costly compounds into valuable by-products through microbial transformation.

*Social Impact Acceleration Program

The Pioneer Fellowship Social Impact Acceleration Program of ETH Zürich empowers entrepreneurial ETH students and researchers in developing their research-​based technologies into viable products and services with a social impact to successfully launch a scalable ETH Spin-​off company. The Social Impact Pioneer Fellowship is awarded to projects that serve people living with less than 10 USD per day in countries that are recipients of official development assistance. You can find more information here.