NEWS
On September 3rd 2015, Ethiopian AWARD Alumni comprising fellows, mentors and fellow mentees informally congregated under the name: EWARD—Ethiopian Women in Agricultural Research and Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting, attended by AWARD’s Deputy Director for Learning and Outreach, Raymond Brandes, was also graced by ILRI’s Director General’s representative in Ethiopia, Siboniso Moyo, who is one of AWARD’s pioneer mentors.
At the meeting, participants expressed gratitude to the organizers of the inaugural meeting, and looked forward to future gatherings. Present EWARD members built on the outcomes from the Eastern African Regional Progress Monitoring Meeting (RPMM), and discussed potential activities to further the country chapter. Members were also given the opportunity to discuss ways of increasing the number of Ethiopian participants in the AWARD Fellowship, improve the quality of the applications, strengthening institutional support, and ways of encouraging interest in agricultural research and development. Concerns about Ethiopia’s participation in the AWARD Fellowship were also discussed at length.
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“Ethiopian women are not culturally visible. AWARD needs to find out why there is a discrepancy between Ethiopian women and our counterparts in other countries like in Kenya and Nigeria”, expressed one participant. “This is something that can be corrected. We need to analyze why we are behind. Country policies and university policies are ahead here in regard to supporting women but we do not see the impact. Women are not promoted like men. We need to train them in how to publish and be more visible. Educating the girl child is a big challenge. Most of the students in agriculture come from rural areas and they have a lot of challenges. The quality of proposals for AWARD Fellowships from Ethiopia is also low”.
In establishing a local chapter, EWARD is following on the heels of Nigerian AWARD Fellows, who have a similar network, called NiWARD. However, members were acutely aware that more effort needs to be carried out in their home country in order to reach a similar profile to that of NiWARD. This was a sentiment echoed by AWARD’s Raymond Brandes, “Nigerians are so competitive and want to be the best in everything. EWARD needs to cultivate that spirit as well–helping other fellows and applicants to write applications.” Fellows were also reminded that AWARD will not drive the agenda of the network, but were urged to drive their own goals and program.
“AWARD is looking forward to greater collaboration and support to EWARD, as it sees these country networks as means of expanding its outreach efforts and establishment of partnerships for its work with institutions that EWARD members are part of”, explained Brandes.
EWARD members also saw the need to network with other AWARD country chapters and actively source Ethiopian success stories as this would increase their visibility and create greater awareness of their work and the AWARD Fellowship.
The meeting ended on a very enthusiastic note with EWARD members eager to take the country chapter further, confident that a well-functioning EWARD can expand its network with new members from across Ethiopia.
For more information on AWARD country chapters, kindly contact AWARD Deputy Director of Learning and Outreach, Raymond Brandes at award_ddlo@cgiar.org.