Open Call for PhD Visiting Fellowships 2025 – Africa

The aim of the visiting fellowship programme and the scholarships is to help African PhD students working in the field of Innovation and Development to strengthen their academic/research qualifications; improve the quality of their dissertations and prepare for a career in innovation and development either within academia or outside (e.g. in the private sector or in government/policy making).

Objectives

• To expose: African PhD students to an international research environment and access to scientific literature/databases.
• To give: African PhD students time away from home to focus on their PhD dissertation.
• To enhance: The African PhD students’ prospects for taking part in innovation and innovation research in their home countries, thus helping to foster social and economic development.

Thematic Areas

• Typically papers presented at the events focused on:
  • Systems thinking: using frameworks such as national innovation systems, sectoral innovation systems, technological innovation systems, agricultural/ health innovation systems to understand how enabling the environment for innovation is and the barriers that exist to innovation efforts.
  • Innovation management: this work looks at the extent, status or challenges to innovation activity traditionally within formal firm settings. However, increasingly, there is work considering how innovation takes place and can be promoted in different types of organizational structures, including public organisations, the informal sector and households.
  • Competencies and learning: this recognizes that innovation creates new capabilities, skills and knowledge but also that innovative activity requires certain competencies to be in place to start with. Work here looks at what these competencies and learning are and how they can be promoted and sustained.
  • Governance, policy and politics: this thematic area has some similarities to the systems thinking them but differs in that it is focused on the connections and power dynamics within innovation systems but also within firms or other organizational structures conducting or promoting innovation. It is also focused on tacit and explicit rules, laws and norms that influence innovation and innovation policy.

Cost Covered

• The AfricaLics Visiting PhD Fellowship essentially covers travel costs for the PhD students to and from Denmark, a monthly stipend aimed at covering accommodation and living costs, participation in selected course activities, supervision, travel, room and board for the home supervisor in relation to their visit at Aalborg University.

Eligibility Criteria

• The scholarship option is open to PhD students from countries classified by the OECD/DAC as low and lower-middle income countries in Africa whose studies, irrespective of sectoral discipline, focus on the relationship between innovation and economic, social or and environmentally sustainable development. Female PhD students and students from low-income countries are particularly encouraged to apply as AfricaLics endeavors to contribute to increasing the currently low number of female scholars and low-income countries scholars in Innovation and Development research studies in Africa. The programme gives priority to students working on topics related to the research themes identified by the AfricaLics network as important to the future of Africa.
• Applicants must be enrolled as PhD students in a relevant programme at an African university and must have completed their first year of PhD studies by December 2024. A maximum of six visiting scholarships will be available in 2025, but the final number of accepted visiting fellows will depend on the in-depth assessment of applications and funding availability. The visiting scholarship is complementary to the studies of the PhD students at their home universities and applicants must already have secured basic funding for their PhD studies from other sources (e.g. African governments, other organisations, self-financing).

For more information, visit AfricaLics.