Remote intimacies: Diaries, newsletters and distributed ethnography in remote rural sub-Saharan Africa

Remote rural regions in sub-Saharan Africa are often described through short field visits, survey data and satellite images, which rarely capture how remoteness is lived in daily time. While long-term ethnographic work in such settings exists, sustained co-presence is often constrained by funding, distance, infrastructure and institutional timetables. This article examines solicited participant diaries and community newsletters as methodological instruments for ethnographic research in two remote districts in northern Ghana and northern Kenya. The design combines paper, audio and digital diaries with curated newsletters that circulate anonymised excerpts in local languages. Analysis shows how diarists use these formats to trace slow unfolding pressures, rehearse decisions and articulate frustration and hope in relation to distant state and nongovernmental actors. The article argues that diary-newsletter designs can support distributed ethnography by extending temporal attention, while also raising questions of participant labour, translation, anonymity, facilitation and extractivism.