The Gender Responsive Agriculture Systems Policy (GRASP) Fellowship 2023/2024 for African female policymakers.

The Gender Responsive Agriculture Systems Policy (GRASP) Fellowship is a career development program that targets mid-career African women in the policy field to catalyze the design and implementation of gender-responsive agricultural policies across Africa.

An initiative of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the GRASP Fellowship is fostering policy change across institutions and national governance systems for women’s empowerment. Through the GRASP Fellowship, AWARD seeks to grow a pool of confident and capable African women to lead policy changes to improve African smallholders’ livelihoods.

The GRASP Fellowship will offer targeted leadership and mentoring training, catalytic funding, and access to networks to enable beneficiaries to lead policy-making processes for agricultural transformation in Africa. The non-residential Fellowship includes virtual and in-person activities spread over two years for each cohort.

Eligibility

The Fellowship targets participants from Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.
Applicants must have at least a master’s degree and 10 years of experience in gender, agriculture, and food systems, working on policy issues at national, regional, or continental levels
Applicants must be affiliated with either government organizations, non-government, private sector, development, civil society, regional and sub-regional communities, or academia

Ideal AWARD Policy Fellows

The Fellowship targets women policy practitioners who can meet a range of criteria. The ideal AWARD Policy Fellows will:

Explain the top policy challenges or questions they are working on
Show how they have played a leadership role in policy development and implementation, particularly in projects at the nexus of agricultural development, food systems, and gender equality
Clearly articulate what policy idea they will work on under the policy innovation projects

Selection process

The AWARD Policy Fellows will be competitively identified through a rigorous selection process that will include assessing their experience and leadership potential in gender, agriculture, and food systems policy development.
Potential AWARD Policy Fellows will respond to an open call for application that will require them to demonstrate their suitability for the Fellowship.
A selection panel of global experts in the policy field, food systems, and related fields will review the applications and select the successful applicants.

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