It is Giving Tuesday today, a day where global generosity is encouraged, for people to show support for their favourite initiatives. As a participating organisation, today we want to illustrate why and how the Mawazo Institute supports African women researchers.

Luleka Dlamini joined the Mawazo Fellowship Programme at the perfect time for her research journey. As a PhD candidate just starting her research at the University of Cape Town, she found that the Programme was a great fit for her academic work.

Before joining the Mawazo Fellowship Programme in 2023, Dorcas Mwigereri was already an accomplished youth activist and the founder of a company called Solar Jiji Technologies, which utilised her ongoing PhD research. What she lacked was a sense of direction, a strategy to elevate her business and research journey   and additional funding to complete her research.  

In 2022, Iyanu Pelumi Adegun had just returned from maternity leave, after successfully presenting her PhD proposal earlier that year at the Federal University of Technology in Nigeria, where she was pursuing a Computer Science PhD. She felt uncertain about the next stage of her PhD journey, only aware of the requirements outlined by her university’s PhD programme. Concerned about how to progress efficiently including the need to present at least 3 seminars over the course of her research journey, her husband encouraged her to apply for the Mawazo Institute’s 2023 Call for Applications, which he happened to come across. Spurned on by the idea of acquiring new knowledge, and her husband’s support, Iyanu quickly submitted her application.

When Caroline Ochieng first applied to be a 2023 Mawazo Fellow, she believed that her primary need was financial support for her research. As a Health Sciences PhD student at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, her research work predominantly takes place in labs and requires substantial funding to cover the cost of expensive materials. However, what she experienced was something else entirely.

The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasises that this World Mental Health Day, with 60% of the global population engaged in the workforce, and an increasing prevalence of  work-related mental health disorders such as stress and burnout affecting individuals’ overall wellbeing, “It is time to prioritise mental health in the workplace!” At Mawazo, the mental health of staff is a key aspect of the organisation’s operations. The Mawazo Institute stands out as one of the few organisations in the region that operates  a four-day work week alongside a hybrid working arrangement.  

Mawazo Voices, part of the Mawazo Institute’s Public Engagement programme, houses Mawazo Connects. It comprises of a network that includes all of our past Fellows, providing networking and public engagement opportunities, as well as a Fund dedicated to support our researcher’s innovative Ideas. In August 2024, Dr. Elizabeth Mutua, a 2018 Mawazo Fellow, attended the Emerging Ventures Unconference through Mawazo Connects. She explains how attending conferences can be vital to the career of a researcher.

The number one lesson for every researcher is that security starts with you. Data and internet security knowledge is critical  for researchers as data forms the crux of the research process, without which subsequent research processes such as data preprocessing, analysis, results reporting, and ultimately journal preparation cannot  proceed. This is especially true for many researchers who undertake their own data collection. 

In 2018, the World Health Organization released a report titled The State of Health in the African Region, and its findings were dire. Access to healthcare in most African regions remains one of the most significant challenges with only 32% of the continent able to access essential services. As the clock ticks to meeting the SDG 2030 vision, many healthcare innovators are turning to AI to improve African healthcare access. Homegrown initiatives such as the Deep Learning Indaba annual conference of Africa’s AI researchers, to Data Science Africa, an African training organisation dedicated to bridging the gap between higher learning institutions, and the ever evolving knowledge required by researchers in deep learning, have been instrumental in ensuring that AI solutions explored bear an African foundation.  

Sahra Ahmed Koshin is a passionate advocate of increasing the number of Somali women in research and academia. For 15 years, she has worked in the education sector in Somalia, creating at every step, more opportunities and access for women in research. A 2020 UNESCO report showed that only 38% of students taking the Form 4 end of secondary school exam in Somalia was female. But the same report indicated that the pass rate in 2020 had achieved gender parity. This means that, even though girls and boys do equally as well in exams, fewer girls are sitting for the exams than boys. 

Between 2020 and 2023, a total of 144 measles-confirmed outbreaks from 29 districts of Uganda were reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) measles regional reference laboratory located at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI). Lamwo district located in Northern Uganda and bordered by the Republic of South Sudan(RSS), reported 28 laboratory-confirmed cases

Postgraduate scholars often encounter various challenges in their innovation journey in the quest for a method, service, or product development. Ideally, many master’s and doctoral projects are programmed for completion within two and four years respectively. But this duration is often insufficient to complete the project and pursue Intellectual Property (IP) rights to protect their innovations for commercialization

“For bitter or for worse”, the vows African mothers took before feeding us all sorts of traditional vegetables such as managu, terere, sagaa or the many cultural names you had for them. It was always an interesting ordeal at the dinner table when your parents or guardian would insist on you eating these vegetables whereas you would be more inclined to every other option on the plate.

In 2023, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) issued a concerning declaration regarding  food security in Africa. The FAO stated that not only is Africa failing to meet the SDG #2, which aims to eradicate malnourishment by 2025, but also highlighted a significant worsening of  the hunger crisis between 2019 and 2022.  The FAO’s Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition: Statistics and Trends, Africa, revealed alarming figures indicating that 342 million Africans were severely malnourished in 2022. 

Amidst this crisis, individuals like Desta Gebeyehu, a  2021 Mawazo Fellow from Ethiopia, are taking proactive steps to address food security in their  home countries. Desta is focusing on implementing sustainable practices within the agricultural sector of Ethiopia to combat malnutrition and enhance food security.

On World Malaria Day, April 25th 2024, to celebrate the gains that African researchers have made in malaria treatment and prevention, we interviewed our very own 2021 Mawazo Fellow, Kenyan Medical Entomologist Dr. Trizah Milugo.

In 2021, when Dr. Janet Surum, an educational Psychologist from Kenya, embarked on the Mawazo Fellowship Programme, she only had a vague idea of how her research would impact future learners. She credits the Mawazo Institute for empowering her to dream big, and consider how her research can be used to generate change in her field of education. 

Her doctoral research investigated the parental, scholastic, and personal factors that promote the academic resilience of students in marginalised areas in Turkana County, Kenya. It was born out of a desire to understand why some students succeed despite challenging and debilitating conditions that put them at risk for educational failure, and therefore lowering their life chances.

Dr. Peace Uwambayeis the Acting Deputy Dean of the School of Dentistry at theUniversity of Rwanda, and a 2021 Mawazo Fellow. She is a passionate advocate forimproving oral health awareness and access to care on the continent. Dr. Peacebelieves that oral healthcare affects the entire body’s health, and yet in Africa, it is oftennot prioritised, both by the individual, as well as in government healthcare policy and initiatives.