Scholarships – Page 2 – Rachel Strohm

Scholarship updates for African students and researchers for August 2019

I’ve just updated my lists of scholarships for African students, and research funding for African academics. My scholarships landing page is here. Check out some of the newly added opportunities below. Unfortunately the deadlines have already passed for some of them, but if that’s the case, do bookmark them for next year.

The Mandela Rhodes Foundation supports African students doing postgrad studies at South Africa universities
The World Bank’s PASET Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund offers PhD funding for African students in STEM fields
The University of Ghana is offering PhD fellowships in the humanities
Windle Trust offers BA scholarships for Sudanese students affected by conflict, and MA scholarships for students from a range of conflict-affected countries
Higherlife Foundation in Zimbabwe offers BA and PhD fellowships
The Inter-University Council for East Africa occasionally posts scholarship opportunities
The Centre for Innovative Drug Development and Therapeutic Trials for Africa is offering PhD scholarships for African women
KAS Media Africa offers funding for postgraduate degrees in journalism at the University of the Witswatersrand
VLIR-UOS offers funding for students from a range of low income countries to do MA studies in Belgium
University College London’s Institute for Global Health has a number of scholarships available for African students pursuing MSc study
The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute offers MSc scholarships for students from Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe
The Rhodes Trust supports African students studying at Oxford
The Association of Commonwealth Universities’ Queen Elizabeth Scholarships support students from low income countries doing MAs in the UK
The SHARE Fellowship supports students from low income countries doing the MBA at Thunderbird School of Management
The Aga Khan Foundation offers support to students from low income countries doing MA and PhD programs abroad
The OPEC Fund for International Development provides MA funding to students from low income countries
The World Academy of Sciences’ DFG Cooperation Visits Program offers funding for African researchers to pursue short-term stays at German universities
The AAA Fellowship at the University of Konstanz offers a three- to six-month postdoc for researchers from Africa, Asia and Latin America
The American Political Science Association offers small research grants to its members
The Robert Bosch Stiftung Academy Fellowships at Chatham House provide one-year fellowships with research funding to mid-career African professionals
The Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy offers small grants to current PhD students from anywhere in the world
The African Studies Center Leiden offers visiting fellowships to African researchers
The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) offers an academic mobility grant for academics to do exchange programs within the Commonwealth
The ACU also offers a summer school travel grant for students to attend summer schools at universities within the Commonwealth
The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study offers research grants, visiting researcher grants, and post-docs for scholars and creative writers

Africa Update for July 2019

Here’s the latest edition of my Africa Update newsletter. We’ve got the CAR’s only pediatric hospital, Zambian superheroes on Netflix, new books on medieval African history, the feminists of Cameroon, and more.

West Africa: Lagos alone accounts for 70% of Nigeria’s tax base. Check out this reading list on Nigerian political history. Here are 10 essential Nigerian recipes. This was a great read about feminist organizing in response to the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon. In response to increasing attacks by armed Islamist groups in Burkina Faso, the government has adopted a troubling policy of extrajudicially executing suspected sympathizers.

A map of protests in Africa, showing increased activity from 2007 to 2017 — *Protests in Africa, via ISS Africa*

Central Africa: In the DRC, president Tshisekedi’s power continues to be constrained, with a majority of Cabinet seats going to ex-president Kabila’s coalition, and Kabila still living in the presidential villa. In Burundi, the ruling party has begun charging people a new “election tax” as often as they’d like to do so.

East Africa: This was a good profile of Hemedti, the former Janjaweed commandernow leading Sudan. In South Sudan, decades of conflict has pushed most people away from growing their own food and towards purchasing it at markets. I wrote about what traffic tickets can tell us about statebuilding in Kenya. This was an interesting history of economic protectionism in Kenya. A new Human Rights Watch report documents the disturbing record of extrajudicial killings by the Kenyan police.

lamu — *A dhow off the coast of Kenya, by Khadija Farah*

Southern Africa: So many Zimbabweans are trying to leave the country that the wait time for a passport is more than a year. Netflix is launching its first original African animated series, about teenaged female superheroes living in Lusaka. Congratulations to Botswana’s Gogontlejang Phaladi, who joined the ranks of great explorers by discovering a new body of water in Switzerland and naming it Letamo.

Public health: This is a remarkable story about the Central African Republic’s only pediatric hospital. One of the coordinators of Liberia’s Ebola response team offers unconventional suggestions about incentivizing people to cooperate with Ebola vaccinators in the DRC. The DRC is also one of the world’s largest quinine exporters, producing 30% of the world’s supply of the anti-malarial drug. In South Africa, the urban environment in Johannesburg makes it difficult for women to get enough exercise.

aida muleneh — *“Denkinesh: Part Two,” by Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh*

Research corner: Read about the challenging experience of being a female researcher in eastern DRC. Check out TMC’s summer reading list on African politics, and this wonderful review of books on medieval African history. Here’s what needed to improve the quality of research output at African universities. Researchers in many African countries can get free online access to Taylor & Francis journals through their STAR program. African students interested in a science PhD should apply to the RSIF PASET PhD scholarship program by July 22.

The arts: This is a great thread on affordable, contemporary architectural design across Africa. Did you know that Bollywood films are huge in Somalia? If you’re in Accra this summer, don’t miss the Accra Animation Film festival from July 27 – August 2. African writers should apply to the Miles Morland writing fellowship by September 30.

Africa Update for April 2019

Here’s my latest edition of Africa Update. We’ve got the extremely loud churches of Accra, the CAR’s only mental health clinic, the 154 perks enjoyed by Kenyan civil servants, Zambia’s first school for children with autism, and more.

Tweet saying that one in five American cowboys in the 1880s was black, and that they drew from the experience of West African Fulani cattle herders
Interesting historical note of the day, via Karen Strong

West Africa: What’s life like as a female investigative journalist in Burkina Faso? This piece debunks six myths about electronic waste recycling in Accra. Also in Accra, 70% of noise complaints are about churches. In Niger, EU-funded crackdowns on refugee flows to Europe have put smugglers and local restaurant owners out of business. Many northern Nigerian states have restrictive morality laws, but actually enforcing them isn’t very popular. One Nigerian state is piloting community service instead of prison time for minor offenses.

Graph showing that South Africa's government revenue as a percentage of GDP is around 26%, and Kenya's around 18%, while Nigeria's has dropped to only 6%

Nigeria’s revenue generation problem in one graph, via Amaka Anku

Central Africa: A new study finds that giving performance pay to Ugandan teachers improves their students’ test scores. Here’s how public service announcements reduced rates of violence against women in Uganda. In the DRC, potential senators are being asked to buy votes from members of regional parliaments for up to $50,000 per vote. This was an insightful article about cyclical demobilization and remobilization among former rebels in eastern DRC. Look inside the only mental health clinic in the Central African Republic.

East Africa: How do people in poor neighborhoods in Nairobi think about dignity and photograph their own lives? Read about the challenges of urban planning and the securitization of public space in Nairobi. Check out the 154 different allowances given to civil servants in Kenya. In Djibouti, salt is still mined by hand and transported by camel. Chad has now spent a whole year without social media. South Sudan’s rival leaders have met at the Vatican to work towards a peace deal.

A group of young Sudanese women in black and red graduation regalia
I loved these photos of everyday life in South Sudan from the Washington Post

Southern Africa: How are people getting by in South Africa, where blackouts often last up to 20 hours each day? Also in South Africa, sex workers are calling for the decriminalization of their profession. Next door, Botswana is planning to decriminalize homosexuality. Netflix has picked up its first animated series from Zambia. A new media company in Zimbabwe is producing kids’ books in local languages. Here’s a good summary of the fall of the Dos Santos regime in Angola.

Politics & economics: Check out this interesting work on long-run institutional development in Africa. This dictionary of African politics will teach you all about “skirt and blouse voting” and “watermelon politics.” In Germany, two African women who requested asylum because of homophobia in their home countries saw their petitions denied for not being consistent about their lesbian identities — which they sometimes downplayed because of the aforementioned homophobia. Here’s a thought-provoking piece about the important role of middlemen in informal markets in Africa. Africapolis has created an interactive map of urbanization across the continent.

A map of central and northern Africa, showing high population density along the North African coast, in West Africa, and in the Rift Valley in East Africa

Facebook has taken on an incredibly ambitious project to map every building in Africa using AI, in order to support its projects related to internet connectivity in poor countries

Public health: This was an interesting profile of community health worker programs across East Africa. Here’s how sexism is preventing people from accessing proper TB care in Tanzania. Dakar’s serious air pollution levels are sending people to the hospital. Across Africa, c-sections are incredibly dangerous — but paradoxically their overall rates are also probably too low, since many women don’t get proper prenatal care and have high risk pregnancies as a result. Here’s a related piece on how African countries can ensure safer surgeries. Zambia has opened its first school which specializes in teaching children with autism.

Women’s rights: Two firefighters in Ghana successfully sued the fire service for firing them when they became pregnant. Here are the barriers to women’s participation in politics in Ghana. Zambia plans to open a museum of women’s history. Check out the anthology New Daughters of Africa, with short stories from over 200 women. Have Africa countries forgotten the female leaders of their independence struggles?

12 colorful portraits of black people

Art interlude with these fantastic portraits from Temi Coker

Arts & culture: If you’re in Nairobi, don’t miss Nairobi Tech Week from April 24 – 26! Also in Nairobi, check out Book Bunk’s grants to host public events at local libraries. The David Hill Gallery in London has a very fun exhibit of photos on Burkina Faso’s nightlife in the ’60s. Check out this great post about Africa’s indigenous writing systems. I can’t wait to visit the Savanna Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale, Ghana. Don’t miss the Routledge Handbook of African Literature. Here are nine ways to select a child’s name from across Africa.

Fellowships & conferences: Don’t miss the monthly fellowship opportunities posted by my colleagues at the Mawazo Institute. African researchers should apply for Future Leaders – African Independent Research fellowships (deadline May 15). The University of Durham offers a Lioness scholarship for female MSc students from low income countries. Apply to the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford as a visiting fellow (deadline May 31). Submit a paper to the African Studies Association of Africa conference, held in Nairobi in October 2019 (deadline May 15).

Scholarship updates for African students and researchers

I’ve just updated my lists of scholarships for African students, and research funding for African academics. The master list can be found here. Check out some of the newly added opportunities below.

Strathmore University in Kenya is offering PhD scholarships in health management
The Government of Ireland International Education Programme offers funding to non-European students to do one year of BA or MA study in the country
The Swedish Institute Scholarships for Global Professionals are open to African students doing MA programs in Sweden
The Rowan William Studentship at Cambridge offers support to students from conflict-affected countries
The University of Nottingham Developing Solutions Scholarships support MA study by students from Africa, India, and other Commonwealth countries
The Chinese government offers scholarships for BA, MA, and PhD study in China
The Fields Institute is offering postdocs to African physicists
The Medical Research Council in the UK is offering grants of up to five years of research funding and salary support to African researchers
The Africa Research Excellence Fund offers training and grants for African researchers in the health sciences
Eni offers a research prize for African researchers focused on energy issues
The Population Reference Bureau offers a policy training program for African PhD students studying public health
The Rothamsted International – University of Nottingham Fellowships offer visiting researcher positions to scholars from low income countries focused on agriculture

Africa Update for February 2019

Here’s my latest link roundup, crossposted as usual from Africa Update. We’ve got Sudanese clones of Nigerian politicians, books on ancient West African empires, the hidden toilet taxes of Tanzania, Uganda’s “herbal Viagra” which is actually just Viagra, and more.

A young Ghanaian man in a colorful jacket standing in front of a black star against a pink background Love this photos series done around Accra by Prince Gyasi

West Africa: Here’s how false information spreads in Nigeria ahead of elections, including rumors that the country’s president has been replaced by a Sudanese clone. Follow all of these female Nigerian political analysts for your election updates. New research in Senegal finds that people who have better political connections benefit more from policies to get informal businesses to register with the government. Senegal and Gambia have just opened the first-ever bridge between the two countries. Liberia is considering a controversial amendment to its citizenship law, which currently states that only people of African descent can become citizens or own land. This was a fantastic summary of the dynastic politics of the Northern Ghanaian kingdoms. Here’s what’s going on with the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon. Read all about urbanization in West Africa with this new report from the Center for Democratic Development.

Central Africa: The government of the Central African Republic has reached a peace deal with 14 major armed groups — the fourth such agreement the country has had since 2014. Ugandan postgrad students must often stay enrolled in their university for months or years after they submit their theses to be examined, as the examiners are not paid for their work on time. The DRC’s contested election ended with Félix Tshisekedi in power even though he lost the popular vote — a result which was rapidly accepted by the United States out of concern that challenging the results would lead to violence.

Here’s a photo of the beautiful Kenyan countryside from a recent trip on the Madaraka Express

East Africa: People with albinism in Tanzania say that beauty pageants and improved media coverage are lessening stigma against them, but they still face the risk of violent witchcraft-related attacks. In the urban markets of Tanzania, male and female traders pay the same market taxes, but women pay up to 18 times more per day to use the toilets. Kenya has banned several companies from producing peanut butter after finding it to be contaminated with aflatoxin, a carcinogenic mold that grows on improperly stored grains and legumes. A new report finds that minority communities in Kenya face greater difficulties getting state ID cards, which are necessary for access to many public services. Muslim students in Kenya may also be forced to remove their hijabs if they want to enroll in public school. Check out this set by the first female Kenyan-Somali comedian in Nairobi. Read about the reintroduction of paper currency in Somalia, after yeras of the exclusive use of mobile money. This was a good article on the regional geopolitics of the fight against al-Shabaab in East Africa.

Southern Africa: Zimbabwe’s government has ordered public hospitals to provide renal dialysis for free, which increased uptake rates but strained the underfunded hospitals. South African law says that schools must provide transport for disabled pupils, but many are being left behind as schools say they live too far away or don’t have maintenance money for their vehicles. This was a fascinating profile of the mineworkers’ trade union in Zambia, which operates more like a business than an advocacy group.

ebola drc “The Ebola outbreak in DRC is really several distinct outbreaks in different areas,” according to Peter Salama

Public health: Restrictive opioid policies mean that cancer patients or people who need palliative care rarely get sufficient pain relief in African countries, although Uganda is a rare exception. This report finds that nearly 25% of Ugandan women have given birth by the age of 17, and over 50% by the age of 19. In other Ugandan health news, more than half the “herbal” aphrodisiacs in the country are actually mixed with the drug used in Viagra. This was an insightful article about the ways the DR Congo and its neighbors are trying to prevent the spread of Ebola across borders. Read these profiles of activists in six African countries working to end female genital cutting. Listen to this podcast about the politics of abortion in Kenya. Aid agencies and government need to provide better mental health support for refugees in Africa.

Politics and economics: This book looks like a fascinating economic history of pre-colonial West Africa. Check out the latest Afrobarometer report on African citizens’ attitudes towards immigration. African industrialization is unlikely to follow the European experience because of the coercive techniques European countries used to restrict wages at home and forcibly open new markets abroad when they were industrializing. This was an unusually even-handed discussion of China’s multifaceted approach to diplomacy in Africa. China also helped Nigeria build a nuclear reactor for research purposes in the 1990s, and they’re now helping remove the fissile material so that Boko Haram can’t access it. This article points out that internet service providers in African countries have to obey government orders to turn off the internet because their staff might get imprisoned if they don’t do so. Ghana is encouraging members of the African diaspora to relocate to the country in the “Return to Africa” project, on the 400th anniversary of the kidnapping of the first enslaved African people to the US in 1619.

A cloth printed with blue cherries on a purple background

This kanga honors the LGBT community in Tanzania (via Kawira Mwirichia)

Academic updates: Apply to this conference on African feminisms by March 31, and this one on gender and justice in Africa by April 30. Submit a contribution to this edited volume on “The Gambia in Transition.” The University of York is offering scholarships for African students doing the MPA degree. SOAS has scholarships for two African studentsdoing PhDs in the social sciences. Strathmore University in Kenya is offering five PhD scholarships in health management for African citizens. Check out Mawazo’s monthly list of opportunities for African scholars. Nominations are open for the Royal Africa Society Prize for African scientists.

Africa Update for January 2019

Here’s my latest link round-up from Africa Update. We’ve got Angolan goat delivery apps, contraception compromises in Rwanda, a deep dive on the Congolese election, postdocs for African physicists, and more.

A skyscraper with fireworks exploding behind it Happy New Year from Nairobi! (Photo by Sarah Kimani)

West Africa: Meet the only bookseller of Guinea-Bissau. Read about one Nigerian man’s horrifying experience in captivity in Libya as he tried to emigrate to Europe. This all-female biker gang in Nigeria drives around the country doing health education for other women. Here’s some useful background on the current protests in Togo. Listen to this podcast on statelessness in West Africa from the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana. Across West Africa, women are increasingly likely to ask for divorces if their marriages aren’t going well.

Central Africa: In Rwanda, where the Catholic Church runs many hospitals, the government has come to a compromise with them about birth control by providing access to contraception in tiny clinics right outside the hospitals. Tim Longman recommends this profile of Rwanda’s Kagame (in French) as balanced and insightful. Burundi has officially moved its capital from Bujumbura to the small city of Gitega. North Korean soldiers are training elite army forces in Uganda. Secondary schools in Uganda are also piloting new Mandarin language classes before rolling them out nationwide. In the Central African Republic, carrying out surveys is a dangerous pasttime. Check out these data visualizations of Kinshasa’s population and flight patterns.

Congolese elections: Here’s a detailed overview of the political landscape in the DRC in the runup to the Dec. 30 election. Human Rights Watch and Christoph Vogel have written about widespread human rights abuses during polling. Election monitors organized by the Catholic Church have announced that opposition candidate Martin Fayulu gained a majority of votes. The government complained that the Church shouldn’t have announced their results before the official results, widely expected to favor the president’s preferred candidate Emmanuel Shadary, were in. Laura Seay and Jason Stearns have both shared informed speculation about how the situation will evolve on Twitter.

Map listing uprisings against colonization across Africa Map interlude: this is a remarkable map of selected anti-colonial uprisings from Paperless History

East Africa: Kenyans are speaking up about extrajudicial killings by the police. In your unusual political dispute for the day, Kenyan salt companies are complaining after the water regulator said they should have paid for the use of sea water in their factories. Here are some good overviews of the last year in politics in Kenya and Tanzania. Ethiopian refugees in Sudan have accused UNHCR of demanding bribes before they can be listed for resettlement elsewhere. What can the popular uprisings of 1964 and 1985 tell us about Sudan’s current protests? The Saudi-backed coalition in Yemen is hiring teenage soldiers from Darfur to fight on the front lines. Eritrea’s secretive president rarely tells his ministers anything about policy before it’s implemented. This is why cycling is so surprisingly popular in Eritrea.

Southern Africa: This was an insightful post about the politics of cholera control in Zambia. In Mozambique, pregnant students at secondary schools can now attend classes during the day instead of being forced to attend night classes “where they cannot be seen.” Madagascar’s prisons sound really horrifying. As the tobacco market shrinks, farmers in Malawi are considering switching to marijuana instead. Angola now has an app for delivering live goats to your door.

Politics + economics: Apolitical is curating stories of young people’s experiences in the civil service across Africa. Don’t miss this new book about the rich histories of medieval trade in Africa. African activists are taking on climate change. Here’s why medium-scale farms have quietly been on the rise across Africa.

Research + conferences: The National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia is a making all research from Ethiopian universities available online. African physicists should apply to this Fields Institute postdoc by January 31. Apply to the East Africa Social Science Translation Collaborative at Berkeley by March 1. Read about why conferences on Africa should be held in Africa. Nigerian magazine The Republic is soliciting essays about the experience of conducting research in Africa.

The Kan festival requests artwork related to Pan Africanism. No fee required. Submit to kanfestival dot com by Jan 15 Calling all African artists! (Via KAN Festival)

Art + innovation: The Nigerian publisher Kachifo has a call for manuscripts open till March 31. Check out five inspired inventions from African engineers. Africa Science Week Kenya produced a lot of fascinating material, including the Faces of Kenyan Science and this book of interesting facts about Kenyan science. African edutainment programs for kids are on the rise. Here are the must-read books of 2018 by African authors.