In 2021, the DAAD’s climapAfrica programme led to the formation of a network of female African climate researchers. The climapAfrica Women’s Group wants to improve working and living conditions for female scientists in Africa, raise their profile in climate science, and highlight the fact that they are particularly affected by climate change.

The climapAfrica Women’s Group was established in September 2021 during a virtual postdoc meeting of the DAAD’s climapAfrica programme. Previously, female researchers from many African countries had already begun to network with colleagues during their DAAD-funded postdoc phase, exchanging views about joint projects and challenges. This has given rise to a network of currently around 40 postdoctoral researchers and alumnae who support one another and help improve the often difficult situation faced by female African scientists. Among other things, the DAAD supports the Women’s Group by providing external points of contact for discussions and coaching opportunities. “The commitment shown by the Women’s Group is very impressive, and I’m not the only one to think so,” says Gudrun Chazotte, the DAAD head of section responsible for the programme. “I have already been able to get many female leaders excited about sharing their experiences with these researchers.”  

Other goals of the Women’s Group involve increasing the representation of women in the climate sciences and improving the state of research into the role and situation of women. “We now know that women in African countries are particularly affected by climate change because so many of them are engaged in agriculture,” explains Dr Christian Schäfer, head of section Research and Studies at the DAAD. “That’s why the transfer of knowledge from women and for women is especially important in this context.” As Gudrun Chazotte emphasises, the network will continue to be supported even when the climapAfrica programme finishes at the end of July 2023. “The DAAD will also provide future support in the form of contacts.”

Dr Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola and Jumoke Adesola Ogunrayi from Nigeria, Dr Faith Yesutor Agbozo from Ghana and Dr Anayawa Nyambe from Zambia report on their experiences to date and on their plans for the future. Dr Esuola ran the group from 2021 to 2022; Dr Nyambe has held this position since 2023.

Dr Esuola, Dr Agbozo, Dr Nyambe, Dr Ogunrayi, all of you are members of the climapAfrica Women’s Group, which has been active since 2021. What were the objectives when the group was established?

Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola: Our initiative came about as a result of the DAAD’s climapAfrica programme. We had already got together a small group of female African researchers and decided that this would be a good opportunity to set up a permanent network of like-minded colleagues across the entire African continent. Our goal is to give women the tools they need to boost their self-confidence and support them in their academic careers. It is not easy for women in Africa to embark on a career in research. And we are still very underrepresented at the moment, especially in the climate sciences.

Anayawa Nyambe: I found it fascinating to see just how similar these challenges are. Funding is a big problem everywhere. Many female scientists have a family to take care of at the same time. Or like me they do not have children yet but are under pressure to decide between having a career and having a family. Many are insecure and perhaps have less confidence in their abilities than men tend to. It is then easy to feel isolated if you don’t have support – especially if you are still relatively young and have yet to prove yourself. That is why we also consider it important to offer mentoring to young female graduates in particular.

Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola: That’s a really important point for us! We hope that we will be able to support each other and the next generation of African women and girls who are interested in pursuing a career in science and related subjects. Ultimately, our goal is to improve the representation of African women in climate sciences and in the academic world.

You mentioned the difficult conditions faced by female scientists in Africa. What are the main challenges?

Faith Yesutor Agbozo: Anayawa has already talked about one of the biggest difficulties: reconciling a career and a family. As soon as women in our countries have children, they come under enormous pressure to live up to their role as mothers. Once you are married and have children, your main job is to raise them. You are considered to be a good wife and mother if your children are obedient and conform to societal norms. If you are trying to pursue a career at the same time, that’s of course an extreme burden. The situation for men is entirely different; they tend to be judged mainly based on their professional success. We must be successful both in our jobs and in our roles as mothers, however.

Anayawa Nyambe: What makes it even more difficult is that there have been far too few female role models to date, so we simply have no clue how to overcome all these problems. That’s what is good about our Women’s  Group: it highlights possible career paths. It has certainly helped me a great deal. We hear about female ministers, scientists and diplomats who have reached their positions despite their family lives having been just as exhausting as they are for many of us. So that makes you think, ok, I can do it! That is of course a huge motivation.

In what other ways have you benefited from the Women’s Group?

Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola: We have suddenly been given an opportunity to engage in an intensive discussion about our own research. In Nigeria, we are now a group of five female researchers who meet regularly online to consider where there is need for research into climate issues. And of course, I can also just get in touch with Anayawa or Faith if I have an idea for a research project in Zambia or Ghana. It’s the Women’s Group that makes this possible.

Jumoke Adesola Ogunrayi: I remember the problems I was having getting a paper finished and how much my contacts in the Women’s Group helped me to finally bring the article to a successful conclusion. Just now I am doing my PhD in Ghana, so it is hugely helpful of course to know Faith. At the end of April, we also all had the chance to meet in person in Zambia.

You referred to the climapAfrica Women’s Summit at Unicaf University in Lusaka. One of the key items on the congress agenda was to advance research into the vulnerability of Africa’s female population in the context of climate change. Have you made any progress in this respect?

Jumoke Adesola Ogunrayi: I certainly think so. One project was presented there that really fascinated me, for example: a platform to bring women in agriculture together and give them the possibility to support one another, expand their knowledge about climate change and its effects on agriculture, and what they can do themselves to address the impacts of climate change in terms of rainfall and temperatures.

Faith Yesutor Agbozo: The reason why that is so vital is that Africa is largely dependent on agriculture on the one hand; 70 percent of people work in this sector. And on the other hand, it is above all women smallholders who are responsible for feeding their families. Women are the ones who go and fetch water, so if they go to the stream and it has dried out, that means additional stress for them. Women in Africa are disproportionately affected by climate change.

Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola: That is also one of the reasons why we have organised a roundtable with women to bring scientists and farmers together. One of the most important goals for us as climate researchers is to pass our knowledge on to people who can use it on the ground to improve their situations. It will become increasingly important for African women in agriculture to have access to weather data in future, as this will help them decide for instance which crops to grow. Or what existing traditional knowledge can be applied based on such data.

The Women’s Group would not exist without the climapAfrica programme. In what ways have you benefited from the DAAD’s funding?

Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola: My research is focusing on a crop that plays an important role in Nigerian diets but tends to have rather low yields. My goal is to improve its yields. To do so, what I needed most of all at first was access to professional lab equipment. This was not available in Nigeria, however, meaning I would have had to send my samples abroad, which would have cost a lot of money. Thanks to the climapAfrica programme I was able to have the samples analysed in German laboratories.

Faith Yesutor Agbozo: climapAfrica is a postdoc grant, which I find really fantastic. Especially the phase after completing a PhD can be quite tough. It is a transition period in which you must prove that you can work as an independent researcher. Ghana and many other African countries do not make any funding available for this, however, so the DAAD’s financial support naturally helped a lot. The coaching provided as part of the programme was also enormously helpful.

Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola: I would like to add that it is really difficult for us to get hold of valid data locally. Searching for it online can be extremely expensive, especially if your institute does not subscribe to certain journals, which is very often the case in other African countries too. It was therefore hugely helpful for me to spend half a year researching in Germany and, having access to professional equipment, to be able to generate my own data.

Anayawa Nyambe: And of course, the funding continues to have an impact through the Women’s Group. The DAAD’s decision to allow not only current scholarship holders but also alumnae to carry on taking part in network meetings was extremely helpful. That really helped us expand our radius – now there are already around 40 members of our group. It also gave a boost to my own career: just now I’m at a congress in the USA on the subject of Climate Change and Health. I probably wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been able to acquire the necessary expertise through climapAfrica.

The climapAfrica programme will be finishing at the end of July 2023. Will the Women’s Group continue?

Catherine Oluwakemi Esuola: Definitely! We want to keep on growing and also include female climate researchers from non-African countries in our network in future. We will probably then give ourselves a different name; one current suggestion is the “Women’s Association for Combating Climate Change”.

Jumoke Adesola Ogunrayi: I also expect the group to expand further. We are also considering getting more involved in mentoring in future. And we want to raise our profile among alumnae.

Interview: Klaus Lüber (15 June 2023)