FUTURE AFRICA
RESEARCH LEADERSHIP FELLOWSHIP
The Future Africa Research Leadership Fellowship (FAR-LeaF) is an early career research fellowship program focused on developing transdisciplinary research and leadership skills.
Future Africa Research
Leadership Fellowship (FAR-LeaF)
The Future Africa Research Leadership Fellowship programme focuses on future-looking science leadership and human capital development that aligns with the Carnegie Corporation’s interest in skills development, research, and retention for early-career researchers.
Furthermore, it fosters the development of the next generation of African scientists and academics. In particular, the programme seeks to build a network of emerging African scientists with the skills to apply transformative research methods and approaches in addressing complex sustainability challenges in Africa.
Future Africa defines transformative research as involving inter- and transdisciplinarity, systems thinking, and futures literacy. It is also research that is digitally enabled, harnessing the tools of the digital revolution to fuel scientific discovery and advance societal engagement. FAR-LeaF supports future-focused research relevant to national and regional challenges and recognises the value of creating a long-term network of future-focussed science leaders with transdisciplinary research skills who can address African challenges.
22 Candidates
from all over Africa
11 African countries
represented
18 Disciplines
Working in 18 different
disciplines
All SDGs
Linked to all SDG's
Virtual Research Environment
Going digital is a disruptive form of scholarly activity that changes rapidly. The methods that scientists used during the pandemic hinted at a new normal in a post-pandemic world. These changes impacted on access to infrastructure that needed to be implemented in a now virtual research environment. The unique affordances of digital media include, but are not limited to, new forms of collaboration, publication, and research methods for data visualisation and analysis. While it is important to collect more data for a better understanding of the challenge, there is already a suboptimal use of current information due to a limited process of knowledge sharing. The Virtual Research Environment (VRE) allow for access to diverse virtual tools to support individual online research spaces and an online collaboration platform.
Digital Literacy Tool
Digital scholarship is not limited to providing access to tools and technologies but also crucial to bridge possible skills gaps by providing the required training. In an academic environment, it is expected of individuals to develop and maintain some form of information literacy, given the acceleration of digitalisation there is an ever-increasing demand to establish and maintain a baseline of digital literacy. Digital literate individuals are in a better position to work and conduct themselves in a digital environment and become excellent digital scholars. The digital skills assessment tool assist with the identification of digital literacy proficiency and identifying the required course of action to provide relevant support.
