On 6 and 7 December 2022, I attended The High-Level Convening, a close-out event for the Peer-Learning for Emerging Researcher’s Knowledge and Advancement (PERKA) Project.
Several funding agencies and donors including senior university administrators and managers gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, to brainstorm and deliberate on post-doctoral research programmes and their challenges.
Participants were invited to reflect on several case studies including personal experiences of post-doctoral fellows in different African Universities on the problems they have faced and do face especially in terms of financial empowerment, challenges in carrying out their research, social networking and employability.
Based on shared experience of invited former fellows, it was found that often there may be little support for those who do undertake post-doctoral research. African universities do not have well-established structures that would help or assist them during their term as a postdoctoral or as a post PhD fellow. There exists in particular few financial support programmes to take them to the next level after PhD while securing a job has become even more challenging.
A particular concern is that mature female candidates who often have children or are married find it challenging to cope with their research work and exigencies from the funding agency, supervisor/s and social network.
University administrators and funding agencies have thus been called upon to reflect on more facilities to be provided to these fellows especially international ones on how to empower and better accompany them in their research endeavours from start to completion of their assignments.
A social network and a database have also been proposed. UoM Management, together with the Doctoral School, has started reflecting on these recommendations
I also had the opportunity to attend the Opening Ceremony of the World Science Forum 2022 on the theme “Science for Social Justice”, where the President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, was the Chief Guest.