Africa’s women innovators can flourish with the right support

“We need all kinds of people doing science,” said neuroscientist and Nobel Prize laureate May-Britt Moser at a Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative event in 2018. It’s a goal that is easier stated than achieved. Women, for instance, make up less than 30% of the global research workforce¹, and consistently receive less funding for research², fewer authorships on publications and fewer citations³.

To help accelerate the pace of change, Bayer Foundation works to nurture and retain women in science and social innovation, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

“We have an explicit focus on empowering women,” says Simone Jonek, foundation office lead at Bayer Foundation. “We fund breakthrough science, but we also want to promote equity across our programmes.”

Embedded within these programmes are measures designed to develop talented women, such as leadership training and access to professional networks, mentors and childcare support. These sit alongside social innovation initiatives to support women entrepreneurs and innovators working in sustainable development in LMICs with seed funding, facilities and mentorship to scale their ideas.

“We see our science programmes and social innovation programmes as a way to make an impact on Sustainable Development Goals, including gender equality,” says Jonek. “Another priority is collaboration because we can only achieve these goals if we work together.”

Global partnerships, local results

“Women scientists are still struggling in African countries and get less support than men,” says Tatjana Gust, associate director of science programmes at Bayer Foundation. “We wanted to support African scientists and build scientific capacity in the regions that need it most.”

One important partnership is with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, with which Bayer Foundation supports the advancement of scientists in Africa.

In collaboration with the African-German Network of Excellence in Science, an organization established by Humboldtians (past Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellows), Bayer Foundation funds the field research of 30 PhD students working in biodiversity, conservation and sustainable agriculture.

The collaboration also supports postdoctoral scientists, some of them already professors, who receive financial support plus a research placement in Germany with their family. Their research should have a focus on regional development so they can take their experience back to their home countries. Additionally, Bayer Foundation gives the postdoctoral scientists a chance to engage with Bayer scientists via a mentoring programme.

“Often scientists in Africa are between 30 and 35 before starting their postdoc because they haven’t had the same opportunities as their counterparts in high-income countries,” explains Gust. “Postdocs on our programme like this proximity to industry, and Bayer scientists enjoy getting outside their industry bubble and sharing their knowledge.”

Career development for women scientists in Africa is always a challenge, but some regions present bigger obstacles than others. “Central Africa is a challenging region,” says Gust. “There are hardly any women professorships, and women scientists — especially single mothers — need extra support to pursue careers or build an income.”

To address this, Bayer Foundation is partnering with the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research, founded by parasitologist and Humboldtian Francine Ntoumi, to co-fund 15 women PhD students and junior women scientists with children from Central Africa, especially encouraging applications from scientists who are single mothers. “We aim to shine a spotlight on the Central African region, which is home to remarkable women in science, to inspire future generations,” says Gust.

Already, Bayer Foundation is seeing more women from Africa join its Female Science Talents programme, a collaboration with Falling Walls Foundation, which aims to inspire and empower talented women in science to take their next career step, promoting leadership through an ‘intensive track’ that participants join for one year. “Some are still PhD students,” says Gust. “It has been fascinating to see their passion to drive science in their fields and be advocates for women in science.”

Supporting women entrepreneurs

Alongside its science programmes, Bayer Foundation supports a growing community of women entrepreneurs in Africa through its social innovation programmes.

The Women Empowerment Award was set up in 2021 to recognize the achievements of women impact entrepreneurs, with recipients receiving a personal prize award alongside an accelerator programme to help them grow their businesses. Among the first awardees was Abimbola Adebakin, an entrepreneur from Nigeria, for her work setting up My Medicines, a platform connecting offline pharmacies while offering online pharmacist consultations and medicine home delivery to expand healthcare access. Since 2021, the award has supported 40 women impact entrepreneurs working in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“There are many amazing women in social enterprises and our aim is to recognize their work,” says Charles Osei Mensah, social innovation intern at Bayer Foundation. “Since receiving our award, Adebakin has won many more accolades and funding, so it opens the door to more opportunities.”

Creating opportunities is a common theme across the social innovation programmes, which also include a Social Impact Start-Up Academy that matches entrepreneurs with university students to co-develop social innovations, and the Social Innovation Ecosystem Fund.

“The ecosystem fund gives grants to scale high-impact ideas with solid business models,” says Mensah. “The point is to create an ecosystem where solutions can be developed. Women are much more likely to start an entrepreneurial business and tend to have a higher return on investment than their male counterparts, yet they have access to much less venture funding capital in Africa.”

Winners of the Women Empowerment Award come together with Bayer Foundation partners to exchange ideas and experiences at Social Innovation Days. Although they work in different contexts, attendees face common barriers, particularly a lack of funding and cultural pushback against their desire to pursue roles outside of norms.

“There’s this common perception that when a woman starts a programme it is supposed to be non-profit, that they shouldn’t make money,” says Mensah.

Change is slow, but it’s coming. “When we launched the Women’s Empowerment Award four years ago, every day we were hoping for an application to come in,” recalls Jonek. “This year, we had more than 2,000 applications; you can see women are spreading the word. Ten-fold growth compared to four years ago. It’s inspiring.”

There are still hurdles to leap as Bayer Foundation continues to support women in science and social innovation, from accessing funding to challenging restrictive social expectations. But innovators such as Adebakin and Vivi Maketa, who won the foundation’s Early Excellence in Science Award for Medical Sciences last year for her work in neglected diseases, demonstrate that there will never be a shortage of women working to deliver scientific discovery and social change. Investing in their talents, and those of so many others around the world, is likely to yield a healthy return for the world.