Working in francophone Africa
The Pan-African AWARD Fellowship opens up the benefits of the flagship AWARD Fellowship to women agricultural scientists from francophone Africa. With nine francophone African countries3 included, it is a remarkable milestone for AWARD as it intensifies investment to widen the pipeline of African women scientists working to improve rural livelihoods across the continent.
According to a 2017 scoping study4 commissioned by AWARD, women represent less than 16 percent of the research labor force in agricultural sciences in francophone African countries.
While a PhD is generally considered fundamental to the conception, execution, and management of high-quality research, including stakeholder engagement and accessing research funding, the study also revealed that only a small number of women in francophone Africa are enrolled in advanced degree programs, with the overall share of PhD-qualified female researchers at only 21 percent.
The AWARD Fellowship scaling to francophone Africa has seen AWARD invest in developing and delivering learning programs in both French and English to ensure optimum participation and benefits by francophone scientists. AWARD has also increased its pool of trainers to include more linguistic and cultural expertise from francophone Africa.
This investment creates an opportunity for the fellows to expand their network, foster experiences and knowledge exchange with peers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and deepen intra- and inter-country engagements in ARD efforts across Africa.
