Ubugeni Bwomora (2023) - Joyeuse Senga
Joyeuse Senga, Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program Alumna, Master of Science (2023), Public Health
The project will be implemented by partnering with the Transformational Leadership Centre, a trustworthy community-based organization already working with youth in rural parts of Rwanda to empower them to work together for poverty reduction and the promotion of education. Art-based therapy has been piloted in various countries with high rates of success, but no project has taken our unique approach to using art for mental health, entrepreneurial training and professional development support for youth aged 15-19 years old.
The project will be co-led by Joyeuse Senga, an Mastercard Foundation Scholar and graduate in the Master of Public Health program and Agape Ishimwe, a young visual artist living with HIV in Rwanda. Our project aims to inspire and empower youth living with HIV to start their journey of self-healing and realize their potential as contributors in their communities through creating income-generating initiatives and taking on leadership roles.
Hope for Cameroon (2022) - Sonia Buma
Since 2016, more than nine hundred thousand (900,000) people in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon have been internally displaced due to the ongoing Anglophone crisis. A majority of these people are currently located in the major cities of Yaounde and Douala, with limited or no access to basic needs such as shelter, clothing, food, and medical supplies. Most of these vulnerable internally displaced persons (IDPs) have lost their sources of livelihood since the crisis began. Hope for Cameroon's (HfC) solution is to address these problems, and since December 2019, we have been carrying out the following:
- Providing short-term basic humanitarian supplies such as food, shelter, medical supplies, and clothing to the IDPs.
- Our long-term sustainable strategy has been empowering the IDPs to become financially self-reliant through business and entrepreneurship training, access to quality education, and agribusiness initiatives.
However, our efforts and activities stalled following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of funds. Our priority is to raise funds that will enable us to sustainably empower the IDPs to take agency over their own lives.
Healthy Leaps Food Orange Flesh Sweet Potato (2022) - Ramson Mwanyai
Ramson Mwanyai, Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program Alumnus, Bachelor of Engineering (2020), Mechanical Engineering
The risks of child malnutrition increase significantly with teenage pregnancies. The nutritional needs of a pregnant teenager compete with those of the developing foetus resulting in an increased nutritional demand when compared to an adult pregnant woman. Moreover, childbirth in these conditions has been associated with an increased risk of intrauterine growth restriction, low birth weight, preterm birth, infant mortality, and poor child growth. A report by UNICEF shows that only 41% of targeted children in need of Vitamin A supplements were reached in 2020, with West Africa achieving the lowest coverage of 29%. As a result, many children are still left unprotected in these high-mortality countries including the rural community of Assin Central. Thus, there is an urgent need to find sustainable solutions to address these challenges.
Through a collaborative partnership between Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alumni and HLF, we will curb this menace and protect the future of these teenage girls by introducing a livelihood empowerment program that will provide income to these unemployed parents. We will also provide our rich-in-vitamin A baby food product which will supplement the efforts to curb child malnutrition.
Youth and rural women entrepreneurship: creating and sustaining alternative livelihood options in Ghana (2022) - Priscilla Boadi
Priscilla Boadi, McGill Queen Elizabeth Scholar, former Mastercard Foundation Scholar, UBC
Unemployment and underemployment affect 8% and 22% of Ghanaians 15 years and older and are highest among 20-24-year-old youth and women. Moreover, 40% of rural women are engaged in unpaid family work. Opportunities to tackle unemployment and underemployment with capacity building and finance are targeted to elite groups, often leaving out rural entrepreneurs (especially women with little or no formal education) who are critical players in Ghana's food and agriculture sector. Organizations such as AGI have been striving to address similar issues by investing in promising agri-tech and agri-business ventures.
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) is a network of over 1200 diverse Ghanaian businesses. As part of their Annual Industrial Summit, AGI has since 2019 organized a national contest targeted at elite youth to award promising entrepreneurs seed funding. AGI provides limited capacity-building training to the contest participants, and there is no monitoring of new ventures after the contest has ended. AGI partners and sponsors identify the annual themes used to guide the contest, not considering the needs of rural entrepreneurs who play key roles along various value chains in Ghana's food and agriculture sector. The rural entrepreneurs in the food and agriculture sector have been under-represented in the last three years.
We propose a model focusing on the collaborative creation of agricultural enterprises between graduates and rural women entrepreneurs. Our model leverages the business contest organized by AGI to create an entrepreneurship hub at the Nutrition Research and Training Center (NRTC), which will serve as a spot for capacity building, creativity, innovation, and business incubation for the jointly created start-ups of graduates and rural women entrepreneurs. Uniquely, our model proposes a bottom-up approach that will identify the needs of rural women entrepreneurs and inform the themes that AGI uses for the national business contest for sustainability. In so doing, we expect rural women and graduates to benefit from national opportunities such as that presented by AGI through the collaborative creation of agricultural enterprises.
The Canada-Africa Chamber of Business (CACB) (2021) - Grace Uwera
Grace Uwera, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alum, Bachelor of Arts (2021) - Economics and International & Development Studies
This project aims to inform the Canadian government with insights about the application of their Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP); in the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA secretariat has been mandated by the African Union to devise solutions that provide greater protection and enhance the ability for women to fully participate in trade. As such, our goal is to provide concrete insights and assist in developing a FIAP policy position in the context of the AfCFTA – this would ensure women seize the benefits of the trade regime.
The Canada-Africa Chamber of Business (CACB) is currently engaged in identifying how the Canadian government can extend its support/partner with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) secretariat. Specifically, this support would be directed toward an inclusive trade agenda – which aims to enhance and facilitate trade for informal African women traders within the context of the newly launched AfCFTA.
Key goals:
- Link social impact to policymaking efforts
- Align Canada’s FIAP with Women's Economic Empowerment in Africa
- Contribute to the discourse on Women's Economic Empowerment
- Providing the AfCFTA secretariat and Canadian government bidirectional opportunities for collaboration
Diaspora Prime (2021) - Asterix Hassan
Asterix Hassan, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alum, Bachelor of Arts (2019), Economics & Political Science
The growth of online shopping has allowed shoppers to access many goods with ease and with just the click of a button. The emergence of global powerhouse platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, and Wish.com has increased the choice between higher-quality options. Diaspora Prime hopes to buyers to the appropriate e-commerce platforms as well as showcase more African online businesses through a Google extension. Unfortunately, not many people on the continent particularly Kenyans have been able to access these platforms due to poor infrastructure (technological & Physical), high logistics costs and Poor address systems. As Diaspora Prime, we have provided a solution by enabling Kenyans to shop online using our Diaspora Prime Google extension which they can install and shop on amazon.com. Our overall goal is to allow Kenyans to take advantage of online shopping at the largest e-commerce platforms including African online businesses.
Ethiopian Physics Society in North America (EPSNA) (2021) - Zelalem Arega Worku
Zelalem Arega Worku, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alum, Master of Engineering (2018), Mechanical Engineering
Many university students in Ethiopia are not exposed to current research activities in their fields of study. Among the main reasons are:
- Many of the universities are less than a decade old and underfunded, as a result, they are poorly equipped to conduct sound research.
- Faculties do not have enough research experience.
The Ethiopian Physics Society in North America (EPSNA) is striving to mitigate these problems through a summer school project. The project is designed to introduce students to some of the current research activities in their field by connecting them with world-class researchers. In 2019, EPSNA held a summer school in which thirteen professors and PhD students from the USA and Canada presented their work at Addis Ababa Science and Technology University (AASTU) and the University of Gonder in Ethiopia. Following that program, EPSNA established a mentoring program to guide students through their research and graduate school application endeavours. To further bridge the gap between the newer and older universities in Ethiopia, EPSNA is planning to establish a research experience for undergraduates (REU) program. This program will help students from all over the country to work with renowned professors in Ethiopia and enhance their research skills.
Nuture Posterity International (2021) - Ibrahim Kasujja
Ibrahim Kasujja, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alum, Master of Science Applied (2021), Human Nutrition
Maize has been used for feeding school children for decades now. However, maize lacks omega-3 fatty acid and Vitamin A that boost cognition and improve eyesight, respectively. As a result, children are not receiving the nutrients they need to perform well in school. School hunger leads to poor educational attainment, which has long-term negative impacts on the continent; for example, the continent suffers from decreased human capital, low employability and decreased socio-economic development. To address these complex challenges, we must invest in children by increasing the coverage of nutrition-specific and sensitive interventions to accelerate socio-economic transformation.
There is an urgent need to substitute maize-based school meals with more nutritious meals across the continent because although current school meals provide energy and protein, they are deficient in vital nutrients like Omega-3 fatty acids, Zinc, Magnesium, Potassium and Vitamin A. NutriPosh (nutritious multigrain flour for school-aged children) is an innovative solution which incorporates maize, pumpkins, and chia seeds. The composite flour we developed contained 3.1% more protein, 5.9% more plant fats and 7.5 Kilocalories more energy per 100 grams in comparison to maize flour and thus is a preferable alternative for the school children.
Inogen Foundation (2021) - Dorcus Nakachwa
Dorcus Nakachwa, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alum, Master of Engineering (2021), Mechanical (Aerospace)
The Centre for Development Alternatives (CDA) at Makerere University (Uganda’s largest and oldest public research university) reported only a 9.7% enrollment rate of female students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in 2017. Generally, the enrollment rate of female students in non-STEM programs was more than four times higher than the enrollment in STEM programs at the university (CDA annual report, 2017). The under-representation of women in STEM is widespread among educational institutions and has socially, economically, and politically affected Uganda’s development. Country-level policy recommendations, for example, gender-responsive training of teachers have been suggested but most of the policies are inactive. Government–led projects involve a lot of bureaucracy and are rife with corruption. Therefore, InoGen proposes a bottom-up approach which includes a practical education curriculum and a rigorous mentorship program.
InoGen is an organization that supports and inspires young Ugandan girls to take up space in the STEM field. Our target age group is eight to twenty-five years old. This is because these are the formative years where students’ careers are shaped in Uganda. The team launched its Mentorship program in December of 2020, which is still running. Currently, InoGen is designing the curriculum for its practical sessions program that it plans to roll out in December 2021.
MotherFood International (2021) - Nafisa Bukari
Nafisa Bukari, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alum, Master of Science Applied (2020), Nutrition
Malnutrition and poverty fuel each other, trapping millions in a vicious intergenerational cycle. Women are doubly vulnerable to malnutrition, because of high nutritional requirements for pregnancy and lactation, and because of gender inequalities in poverty that limit their agency and opportunities for empowerment. In the northern region of Ghana, the prevalence of stunting is 33%, which is of public health concern. Children from the poorest households are almost three times more likely to suffer from stunting compared to their counterparts in the wealthiest families. This is as much a cause as a consequence of limits to women’s empowerment. Research on stunting reduction has established that when a woman’s socioeconomic status increases, so do her nutritional status and that of her family (Haddad and Smith, 2002).
There is a need to find sustainable solutions to address malnutrition and its associated negative impacts through women's economic empowerment. Empowered women are economic engines of change. Through a collaborative partnership between MotherFood International (MFI), the Impact Hub, World Vision Ghana (WVG), and other local organizations in Ghana, we will empower women entrepreneurs, to design, manufacture and sell convenient, great-tasting, fortified, nutritious, and affordable peanut bars designed to address women’s nutritional needs. MFI and WVG have invested $80,000.00 in a similar project in the Asante-Akim North District of southern Ghana. We aim to scale up the current MFI/WVG women's entrepreneurship project in Asante Akim to the Savelugu Nanton Municipality in northern Ghana using a micro-factory model. View an example of a micro-factory model.
AGRIRESEARCH (2021) - Ernest Habanabakize
Ernest Habanabakize, Mastercard Foundation Scholar Alum, Master of Science (2018), Bioresource
Agriculture is the main economic activity in Rwanda with around 72% of the working population employed in the sector and accounting for 33% of the national GDP. Despite these numbers, productivity remains very low, and the potential represented by the sector is far from being met. 75% of Rwanda’s agricultural production comes from smallholder farmers but the majority of them lack information and skills on best practices and the use of agricultural inputs which leads to very low yields, deadly human health conditions and environmental pollution. 80% of the youth which accounts for 55% of the entire population, do not get involved in any agricultural activity, and yet the unemployment rate among youth remains the highest in the country. There have been initiatives to solve some of the above issues but in most cases, 3 issues persist: technologies developed but unused or underused, lack of holistic approaches, and lack of project ownership by farmers, all of which lead to achievement of half targets or full abandon.
AGRIRESEARCH is proposing to collaborate with the Margaret A Gilliam Institute for Global Food Security of McGill University, and the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine of the University of Rwanda (UR_CAVM) to scale up SmartInput, a smart farming solution that is leveraging research findings, data and digital technology for farm management decision support for different level of producers, while attracting youth into the agriculture sector”. With its embedded artificial intelligence network of weather, soil, crops and market data, SmartInput was designed to provide farmers in the simplest possible manner with personalized best practices that will help them to optimize farming inputs and activities, maximize harvest, and negotiate good prices.
