A US$5 million research initiative led by the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) is expected to benefit early-career scientists from nations of Africa with limited scientific capacity.
A US$5 million research initiative led by the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), a UNESCO programme unit, with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is expected to benefit early-career scientists from nations of Africa with limited scientific capacity.
Young scientists who are attempting to establish themselves in their home nations or who are about to return home from abroad to pursue research careers in universities are the focus of the Seed Grant for New African Principal Investigators (SG-NAPI).
According to a call for applications notice published by TWAS, the funding will provide about 20 grants in the current call, with up to US$67,700 per proposal for periods of up to 24 months, awarded to “promising high-level research projects” in the fields of agriculture, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, engineering, information technology, mathematics, and medical sciences.
Beneficiaries under the age of 41 are expected to come from 47 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations, the majority of which are classified as Least Developed Countries by TWAS and are lagging behind in science and technology.
The call also urges that they be connected to institutions without research facilities. Notably, every country in the SSA region—aside from South Africa and the Seychelles—is represented on the TWAS list, and the only country from outside the region that qualifies is Mauritania.
The third and final call of the current funding term is this one. It is hoped that the donor will continue providing funding and carry out this outstanding capacity-building programme, according to Max Paoli, TWAS‘s programme coordinator.
The grant will pay for the purchase of scientific tools, consumables like “partial” fieldwork, equipment maintenance, and specialised literature like books and proceedings, among other things, but it will not pay for the salaries of the scientists. However, as part of the project, it could be utilised to assist a masters student.
Successful applicants may also ask for grants for open-access publications, travel grants, money for industrial connections, and funding to attend international conferences. It has a special feature called the “scientist-after-child grant” that aims to “improve the productivity of female scientists returning to academia after a maternity leave.”
The scientist-after-child programme is crucial because women scientists who experienced pregnancies and childbirths missed out on lab time in Africa. As a result, in comparison to their male counterparts, they might be less competitive, and their students might not have received as much daily guidance, according to Paoli, who spoke to University World News.
“The scientist-after-child programme offers support for research assistance that can, in theory, make up for the time—or at least some of the time—that women scientists lost to motherhood by way of lost research time in Africa. We think that this gender-empowering strategy is a modern one for achieving gender equity in the lab.
According to him, the grant is “modular” in nature, meaning that researchers can use it to request various forms of assistance depending on the particular requirements of their projects, such as industry collaboration or training in various laboratories.
He noted that this makes the programme “flexible and versatile,” enabling it to support a variety of project needs.
“International reviewers gave the projects funded in the first and second calls high marks.” According to the officer, who added that university-based researchers have been the main beneficiaries, the proposals were strong and original, with great potential to produce new knowledge and address fascinating issues with regional as well as global relevance.