Early-career researchers ready to address complex challenges

An initiative of Future Africa to develop postdoctoral researchers working across countries and disciplines to solve complex problems that face Africa and the world, has delivered its first successes.

The Early Career Research Leader Fellowship (ECRLF), sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was granted to a select group of 12 from six countries across East, West, and Southern Africa plus the island of Mauritius.

The project ran from 2019 to 2022, with participants being involved for varying durations.

Dr Festus Adejoro is grateful for the learning opportunities he gained doing his postdoctoral fellowship. “The vision of the Future Africa Institute in establishing the ECRLF fellowship is capable of transforming Africa's higher education landscape,” he said. “I hope more academics from Africa will enjoy the platform and similar opportunities linked to the institute.”

Dr Adejoro completed his PhD in Animal Sciences at UP in 2019 and has recently been appointed a Teaching Associate at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

“The workshops provided a series of learning opportunities. Learning about transdisciplinary research, science communication, collaboration and leadership were highlights for me.”

Dr Alice Nabatanzi, a lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences, Microbiology and Biotechnology in the College of Natural Sciences at Makerere University, in her home country of Uganda, researched biomolecules from the 'sausage tree', Kigelia africana, and their potential to stop inflammation and the proliferation of cancer cells, during the fellowship.

Her two-year stint at Future Africa was memorable because of “its transdisciplinary nature, flexibility, special training given to fellows, and research support for all the laboratory studies. Special thanks go to the management under Professor Cheikh Mbow (the former director of Future Africa), who made all the impossibles possible.”

Dr Carene Picot-Allain, whose second year of the fellowship in 2020 was disrupted after one month because of COVID-19, said the pandemic had “in a special way” allowed her to explore the benefits of working across disciplines she had embraced while at Future Africa in 2019.

Her research involves assessing the bioactivity, cytotoxicity, and rheological properties of pectin recovered from citrus peels. “Rethinking my research by including the dimension of transdisciplinarity has positively impacted its outcome."

Assessing the different properties of pectin, extracted from agro- industrial waste by researchers working in different realms has highlighted its possible application in the food, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical sectors,” she said.

Dr Carene Picot-Allain, Project Assistant at the Centre for Biomedical and Biomaterials Research at the University of Mauritius