A century. This is the time it would take, at the current rate of development of African research, for women scientists on the continent to be on par with their male counterparts, according to the projection of the World Economic Forum’s 2023 report on inequalities gender in the world.
If the Maghreb continues to progress and South Africa approaches equality, for several years the number of female researchers has plateaued, on the rest of the continent, at around a third, warns the United Nations for education, science and culture (UNESCO). As in sub-Saharan Africa, which is struggling to make its Copernican revolution with 96 researchers, men and women, per million inhabitants in 2021 (compared to 93 in 2015). For comparison, North Africa has 771; France, almost 5,000.
And Africa is no exception to what UNESCO describes as the “leaky pipe” syndrome in its “Science Report, towards 2030”: while more women than men (53%) obtain a master’s degree, only 43% are now pursuing a doctorate and just over a quarter (28%) are becoming researchers.
However, African scientists are no less aware of the enormous challenges facing humanity. Infectious and non-communicable diseases, pharmacology, genetics, access to water, global warming, renewable energies, artificial intelligence, agriculture, biodiversity, engineering, astronomy, mathematics, finance: they are found in the most cutting-edge areas of research. They now even represent 35% of doctoral students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
It is to accelerate change that UNESCO and the L’Oréal Foundation, which have awarded the Women and Science in Sub-Saharan Africa Prize every year since 2010 to twenty scientists from the continent, have decided this year to increase the number of beneficiaries. There are therefore thirty young women, from Cape Verde to Mauritius, via Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Madagascar, to be recognized for their research excellence on Thursday 9 November in Kasane, Botswana. A prize of 10,000 euros for doctoral students and 15,000 euros for postdoctoral students, which allows them to strengthen their economic and intellectual situation.
An “obstacle’s journey”
“We decided to expand this award because progress is too slow,” explains Alexandra Palt, director of the foundation. It is a message sent to the world: the future belongs to science and science belongs to women. But, when you have won the battle of becoming a scientist, the war is not over. In Africa even less than elsewhere. African women face so many obstacles to get there. The obstacle course continues after the doctorate, when they should feel like they have arrived. »
If the winners all testify to powerful support from their families, they also recount their daily struggle against gender stereotypes, the social constraints that remind them of motherhood and the home, the lack of information on scientific careers, the lack of means to carry out their research which sometimes forces them to interrupt them, sexual harassment which acts as blackmail for success and can jeopardize their career.
Since 2018, UNESCO and the L’Oréal Foundation have therefore offered each class a week of training following the ceremony in order to better equip them to succeed in this obstacle course. “It’s really a liberating moment for many of them,” says Alexandra Palt, “which can save them years. » Gathered in small groups to encourage discussion and speaking out, they will be introduced to leadership, negotiation – particularly on salary, but also to find research credits ?, communication to better promote their work with from decision-makers and the media, to management and harassment. The opportunity, too, to escape from a certain isolation and to form professional as well as friendly ties.
“The training on harassment was very important for me,” remembers Awa Bousso Dramé, 2022 doctoral student, researcher in artificial intelligence applied to geospatial sciences for coastal surveillance in West Africa. It is a very insidious taboo to demonstrate on an academic level, because we operate in a system where male domination causes damage. I understood that, if we are organized as a network, from the moment we touch Awa, there are 10,000 Awa who can react. Men will think twice before making derogatory remarks, sexually harassing or discrediting. »
“As for the negotiation part, continues the Senegalese, I came away strengthened. There I learned to negotiate funding contracts which do not tie my hands, but, on the contrary, allow me to control my research trajectory while preserving my independence. »
Integrate decision-making areas
Independence, information and empowerment are the keys to an “encirclement strategy” so that these doctoral and postdoctoral students, chosen this year from 632 candidates, can make their contribution to science and integrate decision-making spheres. Because, everyone is convinced, “science thrives on diversity. The more inclusive we are, the faster we will solve Africa’s problems by Africa and for Africa”, summarizes Kenyan Cheryl Kerama, 2023 laureate and postdoctoral fellow at the KAVI Clinical Research Institute in Nairobi, awarded for the discovery of genes responsible for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a fatal and now incurable disease: “As a mother and mentor, I want to boldly go where it is not comfortable to go. »
And many of them are investing in raising awareness among young audiences, aware of the urgency of changing mentalities without waiting for action from their leaders. Like the Malagasy Zara Randriamanakoto, one of the rare African astrophysicists, winner in 2018, based in South Africa. Specializing in the observation of stellar clusters within galaxies, she created the Ikala STEM association and regularly returns to her native region to share her passion for the solar system and inspire vocations among the most deprived children.
Like, also, Awa Bousso Dramé, who developed within her Coastal institute
Along the way, these researchers become models for generations of girls, like others before them who allowed them to move from dreams to reality. Francine Ntoumi is one of them. The Congolese biologist, rewarded with numerous prestigious international distinctions and the African Union Kwame-Nkrumah Prize for her research on malaria, was the first among her country’s researchers to publish in the journal Science in 2011. She today enjoys appearing in school textbooks and developed, ten years ago, in Brazzaville, the Women and Sciences program which awards ten scholarships each year, including a specific “mother and scientist”, to female students from two Congos, Cameroon, Chad, Central Africa and Gabon, “still too uncompetitive and under-represented in research,” she explains.
But it was by visiting schools and opening the laboratories of the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research, which she created in 2008 on the model of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, to adolescent girls, that the researcher really measured the importance of communication. “Despite my long journey, I had underestimated the power of the model that we can be. It is in the eyes of girls and boys, she insists, but also of their parents, that we understand that having succeeded gives them the courage to go for it. What quality research in Africa is possible. It is a very powerful lever for change. »
