Uganda : Connie Nshemereirwe, new Director of the African Science Leadership Programme

Connie Nshermereirwe is a Ugandan facilitator and expert on the science-policy interface. She works to equip scientists with the skills to engage in decision making. On november 1st, she has become the new Director of the African Science Leadership Program (ASLP).An initiative of the University of Pretoria in partnership with the Global Young Academy funded by Robert Bosch Stiftung that aims to train African academics in leadership and team management to enable them to solve problems facing Africa and the world.

Connie Nshermereirwe is the first African woman to head the African Science Leadership Programme (ASLP) based at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. After years as ASLP’s regional coordinator and accelerator, she stands in for the program’s founding director, Bernard Slippers, on November 1st.

The ALSP is an initiative of the University of Pretoria in partnership with the Global Young Academy and is funded by Robert Bosch Stiftung. It aims to train African scholars in leadership, team management, and research development to enable them to contribute to the development of a new paradigm for science in Africa, focused on the contribution of African scientists to decision-making and to solving complex problems facing Africa and the global community. Each year, the program offers fellowships to mid-career African scholars in the fields of basic and applied sciences, engineering, social sciences, arts, and humanities. It focuses on developing collective leadership skills that will help Fellows contribute to “Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want,” a strategic framework for the continent’s socio-economic transformation over the next 50 years launched by the African Union.

She graduated from Makerere University in 1998 with a degree in Civil engineering. She joined the University of Twente in the Netherlands and obtained a Master’s degree in Educational Systems Design in 2004 and a PhD in Educational Measurement in 2014.

She started her professional career in 2001 at Uganda Martyrs University as a lecturer and taught courses in various fields: building materials, educational skills…

After working in different organisations in the field of education, she became involved in formal education in Uganda and joined Actualise Africa in 2016 as a science and policy facilitator in charge of testing educational resources for use with out-of-school youth.

In 2018, she was appointed as co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Global Young Academy, an organisation that brings together and connects the world’s young scientists and empowers them to lead an international, interdisciplinary and intergenerational dialogue to make evidence-based and inclusive global decisions. It also works to bridge the gap between academia and policy makers, enabling scientists to engage in policy making and policy makers to access evidence for policy making. As Secretary General of the Uganda National Young Academy, she organised workshops for scientists to equip them with research and communication skills for policy engagement and intervenes on topics related to scientific leadership and the relevance of formal education in Africa.

Connie Nshermereirwe is also involved in civil society and militates, notably in the Ugandan think tank Kigo Thinkers, a network of academics and practitioners from different disciplines to stimulate thinking spaces in Uganda.