The programme aims to make a meaningful impact in addressing the climate crisis, empowering young people with the necessary knowledge, skills, and networks to drive sustainable transitions by offering a range of exceptional sustainability-focused postgraduate opportunities.
From 2023 to 2030, the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the University of Edinburgh will nurture a community of skilled, entrepreneurial, and justice-oriented climate leaders from across Africa. There are three main strands of the Scholars Program:
All PGT Mastercard Foundation Scholars at the University of Edinburgh will participate in a Climate Leadership Programme. The aim of the programme is to enable scholars to fulfil their potential and lead transformative change relating to sustainability and the climate crisis, particularly in their home countries. Through Africa-based climate justice summer schools, climate-oriented placements, regular workshops and entrepreneurial pathways the programme will support scholars to transition into climate leadership positions. Through these activities, scholars will gain skills, knowledge, experience, networks, and the capacity for self-reflection.
The Wits-Edinburgh Sustainable African Futures (WESAF) doctoral programme, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, aims to provide research training to equip students (primarily academics already holding tenured positions) to complete interdisciplinary doctoral research on areas related to sustainability in the African continent.
The blended programme is designed to enable students to complete primarily online master's followed by a primarily online doctorate.
The Masters by Research and PhD programmes will also combine in-person elements including sustainability schools (in-person schools focussed on enhancing knowledge in the field of sustainability research) in South Africa and contact sessions in Edinburgh alongside workplace-based internships.
Supervision will be jointly delivered online by academics from both Edinburgh and Wits.
A project creating practitioner networks and digital capacity building for higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa, this project will create practitioner networks and digital capacity building for universities in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly for greater inclusion of those traditionally underrepresented in higher education: women, forcibly displaced populations, and those with disabilities.
Find out more about the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, the ECCI-based team, and how to get in touch.