The One Planet Fellowship is a career-development program that is building a robust pipeline of climate science leaders equipped to use a gender lens to help Africa’s smallholder farmers adapt to climate change. It is designed to build and enhance the mentoring, scientific, networking, and leadership skills of the next generation of climate scientists.

Targeting 630 scientists, the Fellowship will catalyze research partnerships and networks and will connect African scientists with European scientists to provide valuable exposure for contextualization of climate change research in Africa. The €3M grant from the European Commission complements the $15M combined funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the BNP Paribas Foundation and will support the intensification of the Africa-Europe collaboration component of the Fellowship.

The inaugural call for the One Planet Fellowship, which closed on April 30, 2019, saw a total of 1,523 applications received from 12 African countries including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, and Zambia. The selection process for the first cohort of 45 candidates who will join the program in September 2019 is ongoing.