New article on Sex for Grades at West African Universities

Some of our readers will remember the BBC Africa Eye's 2019 Sex for Grades documentary. This week, we share a just-published commentary which critically reflects on the documentary and its aftermath, highlighting how it exposed systemic sexual harassment in West African universities while also raising postcolonial and feminist critiques of the BBC’s role, and analysing its personal, institutional, and societal consequences.

On October 8, 2019 the BBC Africa Eye released a 54-minute documentary, titled Sex for Grades, exposing male professors at two West African universities—University of Lagos in Nigeria (UNILAG) and University of Ghana (UG)—pressuring women journalists, posing as students, for sex in exchange for favors such as admissions and internships. Its release triggered intense public debates, and forced both institutions to address the allegations. Eventually, the two UNILAG professors were sacked, whereas the two UG professors were given short suspensions. This study explores the making and the aftermath of Sex for Grades. The documentary deployed great resources to enable women journalists to expose an underreported, gendered problem, sexual harassment, in a largely neglected part of the world, West Africa. Yet, the BBC itself is vulnerable to critique as the voice of the former colonizer of both countries. Drawing on theories of political economy, postcolonial studies and feminism, we explore: the global context of BBC Africa Eye, the journalists involved, university policies, the public dialogue that ensued, and the personal and institutional outcomes of the documentary. Our analysis interrogates the ways in which “Sex for Grades” exposes the commodification of women and how the documentary itself constitutes commodification.

Read the rest of the article here.