Mawazo Institute

The Mawazo Institute is a women-led African organization supporting early-career women researchers to find local solutions to global development challenges by empowering women who are significantly underrepresented in academia and research. This grant will enable Mawazo to develop a policy engagement program to advance African women researchers’ meaningful and impactful engagement with the national, regional, and global policy space. (Strategy: Evidence-Informed Policymaking)

The Mawazo Institute is a women-led African organization supporting early-career women researchers to find local solutions to global development challenges. Mawazo focuses on early-career women researchers, who are significantly underrepresented in academia and research. It works from the principle that African women researchers contribute essential knowledge and perspectives to issues affecting Africa’s development. Therefore, Mawazo seeks to unlock their potential by equipping them with the skills and networks to conduct high-quality research. Mawazo’s vision is to see more African women researchers become thought leaders, change makers, and decision makers in fields and sectors critical to Africa’s development. This grant supports the Mawazo Voices program to create pathways and pipelines that give African women researchers the tools to conduct impactful and quality research and prepare them for knowledge translation. Mawazo recognizes the need to create paths and channels for African women researchers to actively participate in research-to-implementation and research-for-impact activities.

The Mawazo Institute is a nonprofit research institute based in Nairobi, Kenya. The institute’s goal is to help East African women launch careers as academics and thought leaders and connect their ideas to policymakers and the public. This grant will support Mawazo’s work to ensure that the research the organization supports and conducts is relevant to African policy debate and accessible to African policymakers, inserting the voices of young African women into pressing policy discussions.