In Kenya, a law that came into effect on May 30th targeting advertising for bottles, infant formula and pacifiers is another welcome step towards the elimination of harmful practices affecting children; which forms the the theme for the 2022 Day of the African Child, celebrated on June 16th. The Breast Milk Substitutes (Regulation and Control) Act, first passed by the Kenyan Parliament in 2012, is intended to further guide the appropriate marketing and distribution of breast milk substitutes, while promoting safe and adequate nutrition for infants through breastfeeding and proper use of breast-milk substitutes.

Dear Friends of Mawazo,

It is with absolute pleasure that I accept my nomination from the Mawazo Board to take up the position of Chief Executive Officer at the Mawazo Institute as of 1 June 2022.

This announcement comes just after celebrating five years since the Mawazo Institute was founded, and just under a year since Mawazo embarked on a transitional period where I held a dual role as Acting CEO and Director of Programmes.

The Mawazo Institute is proud to announce the launch of the Mawazo Learning Exchange (MLEx) Resource Library. The MLEx Resource Library section contains a carefully curated library of material that has been designed with the African researcher in mind. Our goal with this library is to create a topical place where African researchers can find useful tools and guides to sharpen their skills, improve their research and careers, and find opportunities within academia and beyond.

We interview Anita Soina, a 22 year old Kenyan environmentalist and member of the Maasai community whose activism has been instrumental in educating the public on ongoing climate change challenges, as well as fostering a new generation of climate change activists. As a child, Anita was inspired to become a force for social change, leveraging environmental conservation, which has been a contentious issue in her region and the entire country.

We interview Lilian Namuma S. Kong’ani, a Mawazo Learning Exchange Fellow and Tutorial Fellow at the Department of Earth and Climate Sciences, within the University of Nairobi, where she is pursuing her PhD in Environmental Governance and Management. In the interview, Lilian discusses the role of mediation in sustainable development in the region.

Africa Environment Day was established by the Organization of African Unity in 2002. Celebrated annually on March 3rd, it was established to raise awareness of the pressing environmental challenges facing the continent. Since 2012, Africa Environment Day has been celebrated in conjunction with Wangari Maathai Day, as a tribute to the late Nobel Laureate's green legacy.

Jan 19, 2022 Nairobi, Kenya- The Mawazo Institute, today, celebrates 5 years of operations since its foundation in December 2016. The theme for the Mawazo at 5 celebration is The Female Future of Science representing the institution’s vision of a future where women, science and research are integral to Africa’s development.

We interview Judy Ngina, a Kenyan junior researcher who is enthusiastic about exploring topics at the nexus between gender and development. Her research, at the University of Nairobi, explores how existing gender dynamics in agriculture affect the uptake of new technologies and methodologies. Judy is also a Child Protection Officer at Dadaab Refugee Camp.

In February, we formally launched the 2021/22 MLEx Fellowship Programme whose cohort is made up of 42 inspiring MLEx Fellows that represent 8 different countries and are some of the best and brightest young African women at the forefront of exciting and innovative research projects in East Africa. Meet Rogia Gomez and Njeri Njau in this blog.

In this third installment of our series on rare diseases, we look at the efforts being made to address some of the issues highlighted in our first blog, such as lack of a local registry, lack of scientific and medical knowledge by local practitioners, and scarce treatment options. We also explore possible solutions to these challenges.

Martha, the Founder of Queengineers, an online publication that celebrates Kenyan women in engineering, tends to face obstacles head-on. From when she was quite young, Martha always wanted to know why things worked the way they did. In school, she gravitated towards physics and saw the example of her father’s own career as an engineer as inspiration for how she could marry all her favourite subjects together when it came time to forge her own path.

Research drives knowledge, and unfortunately, it is missing for Rare Diseases. We cannot understand what we do not study. We can rely on knowledge generated in other parts of the world; however, we always have to contextualize it to our population, its challenges, and needs. A lot of Rare Diseases have a genetic basis, this means we need multidisciplinary teams to properly handle patients.

For advocates of rare diseases, Rare Disease Day is an opportunity to create, and increase, awareness in the general public, and with policymakers, around the need for research, increasing equity and raising the patient voice as stipulated by the various Rare Disease Day themes from the last 5 years. But, what exactly is a ‘rare disease’?

Mawazo’s research has shown that PhD students are looking for training opportunities that can help them develop professional skills. Take for instance Jacqueline Owigo, one of the 2018 Mawazo PhD Scholars. Prior to joining the PhD Scholars programme, Jacqueline, whose research explores forced migration and reintegration trends, with a focus on Somalia, had completed all her relevant coursework and was in the dissertation phase of her PhD.

As we launch the Mawazo Learning Exchange (MLEx), our new open online platform that provides e-learning materials and other free digital resources targeted at early-career African researchers, we took the time to interview Dr. Angeline R. Wairegi, Mawazo’s in-house e-learning specialist, about MLEx.

Mawazo is focused on creating supportive safe spaces for our grantees, encouraging healthy dialogue, and increasing awareness about the mental stresses that graduate students face. Our goal is to help further the conversation on mental health in Kenya, adding depth and nuance, so that future academics will find systems in place where they can safely talk about their mental health and receive the support they need.