Friday, March 29, 2024

How These Female Scientists Will Help Africa Adapt to Changing Climate

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By David Njagi

Nairobi — A group of 25 women from eastern and western Africa have joined the list of young researchers racing to bridge the shortage of women agriculture scientists in Africa.

The women will build the next generation of scientists working with smallholder farmers to battle climate change in Africa’s troubled agriculture sector, according to the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD).

“We are giving women more slots in this fellowship programme to equip them with social inclusive skills which will help them work with smallholder farmers in Africa,” said Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, the director of AWARD in Nairobi.

A research paper published by the journal of gender, agriculture and food security in 2017, reported that women scientists working in the agriculture sector accounted for 24% of Africa’s knowledge pool.

Yet women are dominant in the continent’s agricultural production chain, where most of them work in rural smallholder farms, Leticia Osalo-Adalo, a social entrepreneur, said during the 2019 AGRF held in Accra, Ghana.

But the One Planet Fellowship, which is a collaboration between the Agropolis Fondation and AWARD hopes to change this by awarding climate change research fellowships to Africa’s youth, especially women, said Kamau.

The first of its kind in Africa, the fellowship is working with 45 researchers from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia.

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