Priscilla Adofo Boateng and Ibitoye Olubunmi Dorcas, third year PhD students of the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI) have been selected by the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) Steering Committee as AWARD FELLOWSHIP laureates.
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| Priscilla Adofo Boateng |
Miss. Adofo is among the 70 impressive, talented, motivated women agricultural researchers chosen from a record number of 1,094 applications for this two-year career- development program. She is a Research Scientist at the Crop Research Institute (CRI) in Kumasi, Ghana. For her research, she is working on ‘Genetic analysis of Inheritance of maize to tropical low nitrogen soils’.
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| Ibitoye Olubunmi Dorcas |
Miss. Olubunmi is among the 70 impressive, talented, motivated women agricultural researchers chosen from a total of 790 applications for this two-year career- development program. She is a Principal Research Officer at the National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT) in Ibadan, Nigeria. She is working on ‘Genetic Analysis of Inheritance of Resistance to Bacterial Blight Disease in Cowpea’.
Established in 2008, African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) was launched following a successful three-year pilot program in East Africa supported by the Rockefeller Foundation from 2005-2008. AWARD is a career-development program that equips top women agricultural scientists across sub-Saharan Africa to accelerate agricultural gains by strengthening their research and leadership skills, through tailored fellowships. AWARD is a catalyst for innovations with high potential to contribute to the prosperity and well-being of African smallholder farmers, most of whom are women. AWARD Fellows benefit from a two-year career-development program focused on fostering mentoring partnerships, building science skills, and developing leadership capacity. Following a highly competitive process, the fellowships are awarded on the basis of intellectual merit, leadership capacity, and the potential of the scientist's research to improve the daily lives of smallholder farmers, especially women. AWARD partners with more than 200 organizations and institutions, including many National Institutes of Agricultural Research.
WACCI, established with initial funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is a Centre of Excellence for the training of plant breeders for the West and Central African sub-region. WACCI congratulates the awardees for their selection as AWARD FELLOWS.