Editor’s Note
Highly vulnerable to climate change and its impacts on food security, Africa urgently needs innovative solutions to build climate resilience and reduce hunger. An inaugural Climate Action Fellowship by the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is launching with 47 African women professionals tackling climate change across agrifood systems. The two-year program, part of the CLARE initiative, will equip fellows from six African countries with leadership, gender integration, and innovation skills to drive climate-smart innovations for women smallholders.
A new Fellowship seeking to achieve a twin goal of increasing the number of African women leading climate change action and catalysing the production of climate solutions that work for women smallholders is set to roll out its inaugural cohort of 47 Fellows. The 2025 Cohort of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) Climate Action Fellowship comprises women professionals from Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal working on a range of topics in climate change.
The Climate Fellows are at various career stages working in diverse institutions including government ministries, the academia, private sector, civil society and regional economic bodies. This Cohort will embark on a two-year journey to enhance their leadership skills and ability to integrate gender in their climate change interventions as they advance the development and adoption of innovations that address the diverse needs of men and women smallholders in the African agrifood systems.
In my current role I am supporting women fish farmers by training them to construct climate-resilient fishponds with robust dikes and overflow systems. These techniques help secure sustainable livelihoods despite erratic rainfall patterns caused by climate change.
– A selected Fellow from Malawi
Through this Fellowship, AWARD aims to contribute to equitable rural livelihoods by equipping women climate change professionals to produce innovations that address the diverse needs of smallholders, considering the unique context of African agrifood systems. Ultimately, the project aims to build a pool of capable, confident and influential African women leading climate action.
“This Fellowship has allowed us to deepen our work in addressing the nexus of gender, climate change and agrifood systems,” said Dr Susan Kaaria, the Director of AWARD. “We know that the face of climate change research, innovation and policy decisions, including climate financing, continues to be dominated by men. Women’s roles in climate action, including knowledge generation, policies and decisions, are also severely undermined. That is why we are excited to launch this Fellowship that will grow a pool of African women climate professionals to become effective leaders and change agents who are developing innovations for smallholders to cope with climate change.”
The Fellowship is part of Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE), a flagship research programme on climate adaptation and resilience, funded mostly (about 90 per cent) by UK Aid through the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and co-funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada.
The Climate Fellows will benefit from AWARD’s Fellowship model that is anchored on a three-tiered mentoring model to build a pipeline of women professionals equipped to lead, coupled with bespoke training programs on leadership and negotiation skills and gender in climate change.
The climate fellows commenced their fellowship journey with a “Women’s Leadership and Negotiations Skills Course” training scheduled for February 3-7, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya.
This piece was initially published by AWARD and has been revised to suit Farming First editorial guidelines.
