PRAN collaborated with NorQuest, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), and the UofA to develop web-based courses on research, leadership, and community engagement to support our QES scholar. The Institute was funded by the Carnegie Corporation and the University of Alberta.
Access the Gender Institute here.
PRAN’s community-based launch took place at the 2022 Africa Day event hosted by one of our community partners, Africa Centre. A separate event served as the institutional launch.
Data collection and analysis on Black immigrant entrepreneurship in Edmonton and Calgary to support program development at Africa Centre (survey and focus group interviews).
The first Talks—an enlightening series to honour the significance of Obinokors and revitalize this role in Canada.
Discussions on knowledge mobilization, PRAN events, community and partner engagement, and data occurred at the institutional launch, which was attended by several PRAN members and partners from the University of Alberta, which hosted.
A pilot project assessing the visions and capacities of community support channels was undertaken to inform the Community Institutional Scan project.
The PRAN newsletter was first launched, sharing partnership news, events, and updates.
Leveraging our Synergies: Cultural Resilience in African Diaspora invited scholars and community experts to present on the topic of resilience through art. A second day focused on local artists and performers, including an art and photo exhibit, dance performances, and drumming. This month-long partnership with the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta also included a month-long art exhibition. Events were hosted at the University of Alberta and NorQuest College.
Scholars' contributions will be featured in a book centred around PRAN's theme of resilience and cultural strength in the diaspora through the lens of performance.
Hosted at York University in Toronto, PRAN researchers, partners, and research assistants gathered to discuss PRAN progress and next steps.
On the path of social responsibility and global leadership, a QES project, coordinates scholarship exchanges between select West African institutions and the University of Alberta.
The second Talks—an enlightening series to honour the significance of Obinokors and revitalize this role in Canada. Hosted at the University of Alberta.
In collaboration with Africa Centre, we completed Successful Initiatives to Address Intimate Partner Violence Against Women and Girls in Alberta’s Black Communities (SI-IPV-ABC), a two-year project funded by WAGE. The project resulted in several deliverables, including a literature review, intervention framework, podcast series, and pamphlets. Community stakeholders and members were engaged as working group members, interactive session participants, and podcast guests.
Launched in Edmonton and later in Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax, the survey gathers data on SSAI resilience and experiences settling in Canada. Recorded data will contribute to existing databanks that often exclude smaller groups like SSAIs.
Alberta’s Black Immigrant Communities Safety & Well-being survey project
Partnering with the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH), we conducted a scoping review on visible minorities and entrepreneurship in Canada to understand the state of academic knowledge currently available, and how it can be used to inform meaningful interventions for SSAI entrepreneurs across the country. Click here to learn more.
Partnering with the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH), we completed a scoping review of Black Entrepreneurship in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, titled, "Towards Equitable Economic Growth". Click here to learn more.
The conference, Moving Forward: Canada and UNPAD, provided a platform to critically reflect on Canada’s and Alberta’s progress on key UNPAD commitments.
Hosted at the University of Alberta, PRAN researchers, partners, and research assistants gathered to discuss PRAN progress and next steps.
This FRAP-PRAN collaboration uses a PhotoVoice participatory research methodology to explore the ways recent African and Caribbean francophone immigrant families support their children's integration into the Canadian school system through PhotoVoice workshops, community dialogue, and a PhotoVoice exhibition.
To complement the PRAN Zotero Library, we launched the Zotero L&L series led by Research Associate Shari Jadoolal. Now in its third iteration, the series is open to the PRAN network and students. As of October, PRAN has conducted 11 workshops (totaling 25 hours) and trained 63 attendees, including community partners, researchers, research assistants, and graduate students. Participants explored Zotero’s core features, including managing references and bibliographies, organizing notes, and group libraries.
Collaborating with the Gender Institute and the University of Alberta, PRAN engaged in a 20-week-long virtual research development program to develop collaborative, transformative research practices. 22 participants across 3 international time zones and enrolled at 10+ universities met tri-weekly to discuss completed modules on research training, community engagement, and transformative leadership. Participants utilized this training to produce research proposals to build upon in future grant/research applications. Read more about the cohort here.
The African Newcomer Survey was an online and paper survey, developed with a multidisciplinary team of researchers and PRAN partners. The survey was carried out in Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax between April 2024 and March 2025. The survey covered topics related to social networks and community support, well-being, individual and family negative (e.g. racism) and positive experiences, resilience, and challenges. The survey officially closed to responses in March 2025.
Over the past 25 years, the Sub-Saharan African immigrant (SSAI) population in Canada has tripled. While Black population reports exist, no focused analysis has examined SSAIs as a distinct group. This report fills that gap, exploring SSAI demographics by province, metro area, language, age, gender, religion, and country of birth.
21 PRAN students, staff members, and outreach workers attended three separate 6-hour workshops on qualitative research interviews. The training was developed and delivered by two PRAN doctoral Research Assistants. The workshops focused on interview preparation, logistics, building rapport, research ethics, culture, and religion. This training was designed to prepare participants to carry out high-quality research with diverse SSAI communities.
A collaborative project between La Francophonie Canadienne Plurielle (FRAP) and PRAN, Family to Family (F2F) incorporated PhotoVoice to facilitate intercultural exchange among African, Caribbean, and Albertan francophone families, schools, and organizations through workshops, community dialogue, and an exhibition. The exhibition was displayed at FRAP, featuring the PhotoVoice photos and descriptions from participants. See photos from the project here.
The Community Institutional Scan focuses on organizations that support Sub-Saharan African immigrants and refugees (SSAIs) in Canada. The CIS is being carried out across four major cities: Edmonton, AB; Toronto, ON; Montreal, QC; and Halifax, NS. We are carrying out interviews and focus group discussions with leaders and representatives of organizations that serve African newcomers.
The African Newcomer Longitudinal Qualitative Study will track the views and experiences of Sub-Saharan African immigrant and refugee families who have arrived in Canada during the past two years. Our team is interviewing families from Edmonton, Toronto, Montréal, and Halifax three times over two years as they settle and create community in Canada.
This project was part of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship program, serving as a platform for talent exchange between Canada and other nations. Our QES initiative ran from 2021 to December 2025, with our final scholars completing their placements in October. We welcomed 18 emerging scholars from our partner universities in Nigeria, Ghana, and Togo through the project.
The Observatoire en Immigration Francophone Au Canada (OIFC), with support from Francophonie Canadienne Plurielle (FRAP), hosted a webinar in February to mark the beginning of Black History Month. The webinar featured a distinguished panel of expert speakers exploring the topic of 25 years of francophone immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. PRAN purchased and analyzed francophone SSAI census data to support this project and a subsequent report.
Led by Research Associate Shari Jadoolal, PRAN hosted a second interactive NVivo Basics Training. Attendees gained hands-on experience using NVivo for qualitative research, including coding transcripts, creating annotations and memos, working with case classifications, and applying thematic analysis to bring their data to life.
Working with Black Youth for Social Innovation (BYSI) Program at the University of Alberta, PRAN onboarded four summer Research Assistants. With training provided by PRAN staff, the team supported the PRAN Zotero library, conducted literature reviews to support the analysis and interpretation of findings from the survey, CIS, and LQS, prepared research briefs, and supported data analysis.
PRAN purchased additional data from Statistics Canada on francophone immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa for a comparative analysis. The research brief, produced in collaboration with PRAN, the Observatoire en Immigration Francophone au Canada (OIFC), and the Francophonie Canadienne Plurielle (FRAP), summarizes key findings and documents the evolution of immigration from sub-Saharan Africa in Francophone minority communities over 25 years using 1996 and 2021 census data. The research brief is available in French and English.
We are thrilled to report that PRAN completed the first phase of data collection for our Longitudinal Qualitative Study. With a fantastic team of 16 interviewers from 7 different sub-Saharan African countries, we conducted 120 semi-structured interviews in Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. To date, our sample includes immigrants and refugees coming to Canada from many different trajectories from a wide swath of sub-Saharan African countries, ethnic and language groups.
In fall 2024, PRAN completed a scoping review project with the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH) exploring the experiences of visible minority entrepreneurs in Canada through an intersectional lens. The research brief is available in both English and French. A second scoping review built on these results and focused on Black and Sub-Saharan African Immigrant entrepreneurship in the United States. The research brief, Black Entrepreneurship in the United States, is available in English and French. Both briefs provide a plain-language summary of the project’s purpose, research approach, key points, and action items.
The PRAN team developed a series of self-guided, interactive trainings for Research Assistants, interns, and students! Three trainings are currently available: Literature Review, Knowledge Mobilization, and Plain Language Writing. Literature Review provides an overview of literature reviews, strategies for searching and evaluating scholarly sources, synthesizing and critiquing findings, and incorporating AI tools. Knowledge Mobilization introduces the topic, stakeholder mapping, audience implications, and various knowledge mobilization tools. Plain language covers mechanics, diction, and readability tools.
The BYSI interns developed research briefs based on articles by PRAN research team members. Two briefs are based on articles by Dr. Kwesi Yaro: Media and Policy Representation of Math Education in Ghana and Nigeria and African Indigenous Knowledge & Mathematics Learning: Sub-Saharan Immigrant Parents’ Perspectives. A third research brief, Entrepreneurial Motivations and Training Uptake Among Black Entrepreneurs, is based on an article co-authored by Dr. Jonathan Amoyaw and Dr. Phil Okeke-Ihejirika. The research briefs summarize the research approach and purpose, key findings, and action items.
Dr. Phil Okeke-Ihejirika, Dr. Joseph Mensah, Dr. Sophie Yohani, and Dr. Jonathan Amoyaw attended and presented at the 11th International Conference of Community Psychology (ICCP), Gathering in the Motherland: Celebrating the Ways of Water & Reconnecting to the Source, in Lagos, Nigeria. Their presentations provided an overview of PRAN and preliminary PRAN findings on racism and well-being, resilience, and community.