South-South Fellowships & Human Resources Mobility Programs

The grant has been extended to The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in support of its South-South Fellowships (SSF) and Human Resources Mobility (HRM) Programs, aiming at promoting South-South and South-North cooperation in science, technology and innovation. The grant proceeds will cover the cost of 104 participants in the TWAS SSF program (for an average of US$1,600 per fellowship) and in its HRM Program (for an average of US$2,000 per grant), including travel expenses, visa fees and any related expenses, as well as the TWAS related program management cost. This will allow the targeted Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to expand their research capacities and respond to the needs of their people in a variety of scientific fields. This would be consistent with OFID's vision to promote "sustainable development centred on human capacity building" and its mission to "foster South-South Partnership with fellow developing countries worldwide with the aim of eradicating poverty". The Grant supported a total number of 145 scientists from developing countries, most of which are early-career researchers including: • 121 PhD students (including 29 females), of which 50 are from Least Developed Countries • 4 Post-doctoral researchers (including one female), of which one is from a Least Developed Country • 20 awardees for mobility programmes (including 5 females), of which three are from Least Developed Countries The support provided was exclusively in the form of travel grants and this mechanism was extremely helpful as for most TWAS Programmes the partner provides for the local costs. Over 50 researchers from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) were supported. For the PhD fellowships, the amount of females supported is 24% of the total, which compares very well with many other TWAS programmes. The impact of the contribution is undoubtedly remarkable, with nearly 155 young researchers in total supported for capacity building in science and technology.