Meaning-Making Research Initiatives for Female Scholars (Africa)

The MRI is designed to facilitate research that contributes to agendas for imagining, planning, and creating African futures. A key objective of the MRI is to increase the legibility and visibility of the research supported by the Council.

The discussion on the involvement and contributions of women as social scientists and knowledge producers has held a significant position in the African intellectual discourse. Indeed, the Council has prioritized the long-term goal of increasing the participation of female scholars in the work and governance of CODESRIA due to the often marginalized position of women in the African academic and research landscape.

The incorporation of women into research endeavors conducted, both within and outside Africa, with a focus on themes linked to Africa, is intended not only to challenge what has been historically deemed significant in African societies and communities but also to propose a reconsideration of fundamental research criteria. This encourages researchers to pay careful attention to the necessity of acquiring in-depth knowledge of social contexts, thereby averting distorted interpretations and analyses.

Thematic Priorities

• All applications must engage with CODESRIA’s 2023-2027 thematic priorities and cross-cutting issues:
  • Higher education dynamics in Africa
    • Role of higher education in economic and political transformation in Africa; the transformation of the African higher education landscape; higher education reform and innovations; higher education governance and leadership; governance and academic freedom; Diaspora engagements with African universities; valorization of Indigenous Knowledge Systems; outmigration and education; education funding; AU Commission and Agenda 2063 and higher education; massification, privatization and liberalization of higher education.
  • The State and Democratisation in Africa: Trends and Prospects
    • Reconnection with CODESRIA’s work on democratization and related themes; link between power, peace, and security; institutional variations, histories and contexts; debates and critiques of procedural democracy; challenges of the liberal democratic model; substantive democracy and its operationalization; typology for comparative studies on the state and democratization; state, politics, and citizenship.
  • Transformations in African Economies
    • Economic policy-making in Africa; dependency and structural transformation; export economies and industrialization; informalization of economies; histories and evolution of labor unionization; public private partnership; multilateral governance; the idea of planning in current economic thinking; heterodox traditions and welfare policy; alternative economic theories; reinventing economic systems; structural and institutional challenges of development; interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary conversations on economic policy; policy sovereignty for Africa.
  • Ecologies and Society in Africa
    • Interactions between people and ecological systems; land, food sovereignty and poverty in the developing world; histories and trajectories of environmental interactions; complex interactions of the urban and the rural; mineral extraction and the transformation of habitats; structural transformations in agriculture and industrialization; conservancy practices, commodification and impact on societies.
  • Cross-cutting themes
    • History, Memory and Archive
    • Gender
    • Generations
    • Rurality and Urbanity.

Funding Information

• The Council will offer up to USD 25,000 for each winning project.

Eligibility Criteria

• The call invites applications from groups only.
• No individual awards will be granted. All projects should:
  • be headed by female scholars; and
  • have only women as members.
• Only in exceptional cases, and with proper justification, will the Council admit a group that has a majority of female applicants with a small number of male members.
• The members of a group may be from one country or multiple countries.
• In fact, they strongly encourage applications with members from different countries.
• Each group should have between 3 and 5 members and should take into account.

Criteria

• Projects funded under this initiative should meet most of the following criteria:
  • Propose research on key aspects of African social realities that fall under CODESRIA’s priority themes as outlined in the CODESRIA 2023-2027 Strategic Plan;
  • Be grounded in a thorough exploration of the continent’s societies, peoples, institutions, and contexts while paying attention to issues of diversity, including gender;
  • Engage constructively and rigorously with African futures;
  • Be theoretically ambitious with a clear goal of providing innovative ways of making sense of African social phenomena and Africa’s place in the world;
  • Explore multiple spatial, temporal and sectoral configurations where relevant to the process of meaning-making;
  • Demonstrate familiarity with the knowledge already produced by CODESRIA on the subject researched;
  • Be guided by clear questions, a sound methodology and conceptual framing.

For more information, visit CODESRIA.