Climate change centre offers scholarships to 100 West Africans
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) has awarded scholarships to 100 postgraduate students to pursue thematic courses in Climate Change in West Africa.
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The programme, managed by the Capacity Building Department of the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), is part of efforts to strengthen West Africa’s human scientific capacities to analyse regional climate change impacts.
The scholarship also forms part of WASCAL’s commitment to training and building the capacity of the next generation of African scientists to champion the fight against climate change, while influencing governments and policy makers.
The graduate programme also aims at designing strategies to adapt to threats, opportunities and uncertainties of climate change within the region.
Programmes to be pursued
The 100 students, made up of 60 Doctoral Research Programme and 40 Master’s Research Programme students, were drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Togo, Benin, The Gambia, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire.
They will be moving into their various universities, depending on the climate change thematic courses they have chosen to pursue.
Beneficiaries so far
This is the third batch of students admitted to the WASCAL programme since the inception of the WASCAL Capacity Building Programme in 2012.
So far, 255 students have benefited from the scholarship programme. The postgraduate programme is a partnership between 10 West African universities and selected German institutions.
What is WASCAL?
The West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) is a large-scale research-focused climate service centre mandated to help tackle the challenges of climate change in West Africa.
It was established by its member countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Mali and Togo, with the support of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
With the vision of becoming one of Africa’s leading name in the provision of climate change services in and for West Africa, WASCAL is organised around three principal departments: Climate Service, the Research and the Capacity Building departments.
Gratitude
The students, who will be studying in 10 top universities in West Africa, expressed gratitude for the opportunity given them by BMBF through WASCAL. They pledged to fully maximise it to the benefit of their career and West Africa as a whole.