African Climate Change Fellowship Program (ACCFP)

The African Climate Change Fellowship Program (ACCFP) enables African practitioners, researchers, educators and graduate students to undertake activities that enhance their capacities for advancing and applying knowledge for climate change adaptation in Africa. The program is currently supporting its third round of Fellowship awards (2012). Having already engaged 94 Fellows and over 100 institutions, to date, the ACCFP is recognized as a major platform for education, training and capacity building in Africa.

ACCFP Fellows receive small grants that enable them to visit other institutions – “Host Institutions” – where they collaborate with mentors to implement individually-designed projects that, for example, assess and prioritize climate risks, investigate current practices for designing and implementing adaptation actions, consider approaches for integrating adaptation with planning and practice and/or develop curriculum that promotes integration of climate change and climate change adaptation into graduate level education. Current Fellowship types include:

Adaptation Science Fellowships
Adaptation Policy Fellowships
Adaptation Teaching Fellowships

All ACCFP Fellows participate in periodic workshops and training sessions that add value to the research experience. Such activities challenge Fellows to step “outside the box” in considering the role and potential contributions of their individual work within broader efforts to address climate change adaptation challenges in Africa. Most events are organized in conjunction with regional or international conferences in order to foster and enable new opportunities for international cooperative research, partnerships and exchange. Please visit the ACCFP Photo Gallery for images from previous workshops, seminars and conferences. Such integrative program activities, particularly those that enable Fellows to be exposed to and participate in discussions, exercises and debates with an international community of experts, are recognized as a critical component of the ACCFP success story.

The ACCFP is hailed as a “first-of-its-kind” program for Africa. It seeks to create an active and engaged community of individuals and institutions that are dedicated to building scientific capacity in African to address threats from climate change. The ACCFP is also unique in that it creates Fellowship opportunities for not only researchers, scientists and academics but also professionals who are responsible for decision-making and management of climate sensitive resources. Many Fellowship projects have directly supported adaptation decision-making, and tangible and sustained links have been made between institutions in Africa that had not interacted prior to program participation. Program alumni have gone on to excel in institutions that span regions, languages and interests and are the inaugural members of a cadre of Africa climate change specialists who are ready and willing to promote adaptation policy and actions.

START, working in partnership with the Institute of Resource Assessment at the University of Dar Es Salaam (IRA-UDSM) and the African Academy of Sciences, managed the inaugural phase of the ACCFP. Rounds 2 and 3 of program awards are managed by the ACCFP Secretariat based at IRA-UDSM and implemented in partnership with the International START Secretariat. To learn more about ACCFP activities and each round of Fellowships, please click on the links below: