Mastercard Foundation
The African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and the Mastercard Foundation began exploring a partnership in 2022, following discussions in Accra on building equitable research collaborations and strengthening the role of African universities in addressing the continent’s development challenges.
In 2025, ARUA and the Mastercard Foundation formalised this commitment through a partnership agreement to scale up ARUA’s Early Career Researchers (ECR) Programme. Over four years, the Foundation will support over 150 early-career researchers through the six-month fellowship, giving promising young African scientists protected time away from routine teaching and administrative duties to focus on their research.
ECR fellows are hosted within ARUA’s Centres of Excellence and Africa–Europe CoREs, where they collaborate with established researchers in areas aligned with their research interests. Fellows placed in ARUA Centres of Excellence contribute to research addressing Sustainable Development Goal-related challenges. At the same time, those hosted by Africa–Europe CoREs engage with themes connected to the African Union–European Union innovation agenda.
Some key activities undertaken under the program include:
- An information webinar on the ECR Program
- The first regional workshop for fellows
- A webinar on blogging for ECRs
- Bloggers page for ECRs
To find out more about program beneficiaries, Click Here.
