Dear friends,

In this issue, we are excited to welcome two new AWARD country chapters to our continental network. Mozambican Women in Agricultural Research and Development (MozAWARD) was launched at the Eduardo Mondlane University, while  Malawi African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (MAWARD) was unveiled at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR). AWARD country chapters are designed to catalyze networks for advocacy, knowledge sharing, and intra-country collaborations, and they play a critical role in advancing AWARD’s mission at the country level.

Before they can be effective agricultural research leaders, African women must first be scientists of uncompromising quality. Advanced Science Training (AST) is a key component of our efforts to strengthen African women’s scientific research skills. In our first systematic analysis of the impact of AWARD’s AST, we bring you an account of 182 AWARD Fellows who have taken advantage of their AST research placement opportunities. The report contains valuable lessons that would be valuable to anyone trying to replicate the AWARD Fellowship model. Lessons learned include the importance of nurturing connections not just between individual scientists, but also catalyzing connections between research institutions.

Join us as we celebrate with members of our AWARD community including Omolara Titilayo Aladesanmi, a 2014 AWARD Fellow from Nigeria who was selected for the 2018/2019 Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future Fellowship. Aladesanmi will be using the opportunity for her postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California. A young agricultural researcher and entrepreneur from Malawi, Plirani Khoza, shares with us how AWARD mentorship has propelled her career to greater heights. Our Steering Committee member, professor Frans Swanepoel, was appointed as the Director of International Fellowships at the University of Pretoria.

What does gender have to do with cassava virus management? In our latest AWARD TV series, we speak to Dr. Justin Pita, one of Africa’s leading virologist using science to solve a pressing need for farming communities in West Africa. Dr. Pita is the Director of the West African Virus Epidemiology (WAVE) project and the newest member of the AWARD Steering Committee.

In the run-up to the Next Einstein Forum’s Global Gathering in March, we joined other partners for the Science Africa Workshop on Pan-African Initiatives for Research Capacity Building. This workshop explored the links between basic research and development challenges in Africa, the role of a robust science-policy nexus and how to pragmatically fix the all too familiar leaky pipeline of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The German Research Foundation (DFG), the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) and Rwanda’s National Council for Science and Technology (NCST) partnered to organize the forum, and we were honored to partner with them in bringing a gender lens to the conversation.

Finally, did you know that 2018 marks a decade since our founding? We are excited at this huge milestone, and we would like to take some time, together with our partners, to reflect, celebrate and learn as we look ahead to many more decades. I invite you to keep visiting our website and social media platforms for more announcements and stories of #AWARDat10.

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, and LinkedIn pages.

Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg
Director, AWARD