We hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe and healthy amid the unprecedented effects of the COVID-19 crisis. We at African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) remain committed to our shared responsibility of preventing the spread of the pandemic. We have postponed our activities and all the AWARD staff is working remotely. Still, we remain committed to AWARD’s mission, and, from the safety of their homes, the AWARD staff is enabled and empowered to respond to any questions you may have regarding our interventions.

In the meantime, I am excited to share with you some of the recently published news articles featuring our work. In our latest op-ed, we highlight why gender inequality is crippling the efforts to end global hunger and how AWARD is contributing to solutions. In this feature published by the Thomas Reuters Foundation, find out why Africa needs more scientific expertise to help small-scale farmers adapt and how we are accelerating this objective through the One Planet Fellowship.

The call for applications for the 2020 cohort of the One Planet Fellowship is closing at the end of this month. I invite you to help us promote the call as we approach the deadline on March 31, 2020.

Remember, you can stay up-to-date with our latest news and opportunities by visiting our website. We also share news updates and run online discussions on our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram pages. To comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we had to purge and re-start our mailing list. If you know anyone who is no longer receiving our emails please ask them to re-subscribe to our mailing list.

Finally, with studies seeming to show that COVID-19 impacts men more than women, ensuring that our scientists have the commitment and skills to conduct gender-responsive research remains ever more important. The world will never be the same after this pandemic, but we also believe that with the right investments, we can emerge stronger and with a scientific community better equipped to respond to the needs and priorities of our diverse populations.