Image: Dr Gregory Jumah Nyongesa, Dr Jeandri Robertson, Dr Albert Shikongo, Professor Agnes Nairn, Daniel Ikenna Molobe, Professor Pam Raburu, Dr Emily Crick, Dr Caitlin Ferreira, Dr David Kakeeto, Dr Branco Sekalegga in Kenya, May 2025.
After their successful workshop in Kenya earlier this year, funded by the Perivoli Africa Research Centre and the University of Bristol's Research Development International Collaboration Awards, the Pan-African Gambling Harms Research Network is running a new, international research project looking at student gambling in Africa (Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa) and the global North (UK and Sweden).
This project, running from June to December 2025, aims to produce a one-of-its-kind study comparing gambling harms in universities across seven universities: University of Lagos, University of Cape Town, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST)/University of Nairobi, University of Namibia, Makerere University, Luleå University of Technology, and University of Bristol
The project will include online surveys and interviews with over 2,500 students to investigate how much gambling occurs at universities and what the harms are. By doing so, the research will be able to compare gambling patterns amongst students in the seven countries. The aim is to understand the motivations that lead students to gambling, the types of gambling carried out, as well as to measure levels of gambling harms across the seven countries. It will also investigate the consequences of gambling in each country and compare national patterns of student gambling by: gender, academic discipline, year of study, levels of wellbeing and family background.
The project teams will be meeting in-person again in October for a workshop and public lecture about “Tackling the World-Wide Gambling Epidemic. What Can We Learn from Africa?”.