If you want your research to have impact, don’t underestimate the power of communication
Nairobi, Kenya | August 9, 2024
By Ian Evans
With a background in electrical engineering, Martha Wakoli is a manager at CLASP, an international appliance efficiency nonprofit.
Communication did not come naturally to this engineering researcher, but it’s made a massive difference for the people and policies her work impacts. Here’s how.
Martha Wakoliopens in new tab/window, who won the 2024 Kathleen Gaffney Prizeopens in new tab/window, has reason to believe that communication is a powerful tool for researchers looking to make a difference.
Starting her career as an electrical engineer working on railways and powerlines, Martha is now a manager at CLASPopens in new tab/window, an international appliance efficiency nonprofit. By examining the ways people interact with their appliances, she determines how their usage can affect energy policies aimed at improving the lives of billions and reduce the impact of climate change.
To make that happen, she said, communication is key.
“I think of research communication as a core function for a researcher,” she said, highlighting two key areas.
Getting ahead of misinformation
One reason Martha believes communication is vital is that it helps fight misinformation:
There’s that very common saying about how before the truth is out the door, a lie is halfway round the world. So there’s an obligation for researchers to provide reliable, referenceable information on topics like climate and health. If there’s not enough good information out there, then people will turn to whatever is there, even if it’s of questionable quality.
The second reason relates to a key aspect of Martha’s work.
Making sure decision-makers are informed
As an applied researcher, her objective has always been to contribute to evidence that can influence either investment or policy:
The end goal is closing the energy access gap, and research is the vehicle that helps us get there. For the people who make the decisions that close the gap, I need to make sure they’re aware of the best information all the time.
Joining CLASP represented a shift from working on the supply side of electricity to the user side. That change brought with it a new understanding of what energy policy might mean to people’s daily lives.
Seeing how people interact with electricity — how it gives them cooling, how it allows them to pump water, watch TV and get informed — required a lot more than what my engineering training could provide. It needed a kind of high-level mathematical analysis blended with some qualitative nuance for understanding user-centric insights.
Martha Wakoli and her team from CLASP meet with residents in a Rwanda village before field testing a solar-powered water pump.
For Martha, that emphasis on how policy affects people in day-to-day life is an essential part of making a difference. Where she works, in Kenya, it takes on a different aspect to other parts of the world, she explained:
“In Europe or America, you can design products and test them in the initial stages so that they are more suited for the end user; they can ask whether drivers want a seatbelt to go left to right or how they can make steering more comfortable and design accordingly,” she said.
However, because Kenya imports a lot of is appliances — as do most African countries — part of Martha’s work is to act as a bridge between users in Kenya and those product designers who are often based in India, China or Europe. As Martha explained: “We relay people’s feedback to manufacturing and design partners so that when those products eventually come to be used in markets like ours, they’re better suited for the way people use them.”
Solar energy can make a massive difference to people living in areas where electricity is unavailable or unreliable. Here, workers field test a solar water pump in Rwanda.
Naturally, one of the most important elements of this process is hearing from people who use these products and who are affected by policy and products. Listening, Martha argued, is a vital part of communicating:
I have a lot of privilege. I grew up in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, and when I was growing up there, it was mostly electric even though we experienced frequent power outages. So to pick an example, my day-to-day experience of high temperatures is that because I have access to electricity, I can potentially plug in an AC when necessary.
Bringing in a more diverse range of voices, such as people who live in unelectrified parts of the country, is necessary because it helps fill in the gaps that privilege might cause you to miss, Martha said.
It improves research outputs, but it also helps with buy-in, with communicating changes. You get a lot more investment from communities where you work when you’re willing to learn from them, and it also builds our credibility with manufacturers. They’re not designing solar water pumps for someone who lives in Nairobi, they’re designing them for someone who has less access to electricity than I do, so that’s the feedback that is most relevant.
One of those people is Doris Chuwa, who owns a small store in Nigeria.
Doris Chuwa with the Koolbok solar refrigerator she bought for her small store in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, record-breaking temperatures and inconsistent power supplies lead many homes and businesses to rely on expensive, polluting diesel generators for electricity — a system not everyone can afford, according to CLASP. Doris said the solar refrigerator she bought has boosted her business’s income while allowing her to sell cool drinks to her customers. In a testimonial for Kookboks, she wrote:
Since I [bought a Koolboks fridge], I noticed the business has changed. When my customers come to me saying they have no power supply and ask how I have electricity, I tell them I am using Koolboks to chill my drinks. If you have this [fridge], your business will change.
3 communication tips (from one who had to learn)
Despite her ability to explain complex concepts and bring them to life with examples, Martha doesn’t describe herself as having a natural inclination for communication: “I’m very introverted, and I love maths and figures. I had to learn how to package that up with storytelling.”
She shared some thoughts on how other researchers can do the same, prefacing her tips by saying: “A lot of this is borrowed advice — advice I got from my Dad.”
1. Assume the audience is on your side.
First, assume the audience wants you to win. The reason people are reading your work or attending your presentation is because they’re curious about what you have to say. So assume that they’re on your team until proven otherwise.
2. Prepare for your audience
You’re the one who’s done the research, and you can probably reel numbers off the top of your head. But prepare the kind of messaging you would like to use because different audiences need different perspectives. Preparing in advance means thinking about your audience and crafting a narrative that draws on your evidence and speaks to their motivations or interests.
3. Practice!
Martha noted that when she’s nervous, she tends to speak faster — if she has practiced, “muscle memory” will kick in and she will remember to take a breath, pick up the thread and continue.
It’s always practice. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect public speaker, but the more you practice, the less intimidating it will become.
It all comes down to trust
Developing those skills is essential, Martha said, because trust in research depends on good communication.
I do find that whether people trust in information from a source of authority — scientific or otherwise — is often a reflection of whether there has been a breakdown in trust in society in general. There’s something of a link between the idea that when people stop believing their governments, or when people stop believing the people in authority, they are also less likely to believe their scientists.
Connected to that, Martha said, is an expectation from the public that scientists will have all the answers, which can create an unfair burden.
Instead, I think trust can be rebuilt by having the ethical standpoint that we should be clear when we don’t have all the answers. Scientists should be comfortable saying, ‘This is what we know so far.’ It helps to build trust because you don’t patronize them — you let them know what the information is.
Driving inclusion in STEM
In addition to her work with CLASP, Martha is the founder and editor of Queengineersopens in new tab/window, a free online publication showcasing female engineers to provide role models for African girls interested in STEM subjects. She explained how the publication got off the ground:
One of the things that struck me when I was an engineer was that I was often the only woman on the technical team. It was strange, in a way, given I was working on infrastructure that everyone uses.
Investigating further, Martha realized that there was very little attention given to the transition girls experience from primary education to secondary education.
The messaging, both from a societal perspective and from what we consume in media, is that science is masculine and uncool. And so most people then choose the alternative and don’t even give it a chance.
Martha’s solution was to engage adolescent girls between 13 and 17 and explain her work in everyday terms: “I’d say ‘I fix a train. I open part X and do Y.’” But as much as her audience may have found that interesting, they didn’t always make the connection between that work and subjects such as physics. There was a disconnect, Martha said:
A friend of mine and I decided came up with the idea of an online magazine about female engineers in Kenya. The thing that struck me about young girls in Kenya is they were really interested in reading magazines. So we created this platform that has very cool pictures of women, and they're talking about their day job. And that then meant we could use that as a tool to say, ‘You’ve heard me today, and I’ve told you about what I do. Here are 50 more people, right, who do interesting things in engineering.’
Now, the magazine has about 8,000 readers, and Martha has reached around 600 students through in-person events.
From a small seed, it’s become a really impactful example of how we can use communication to make young people more interested in science.
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