LEADERSHIP PATHWAYS FOR YOUNG SCIENTISTS IN ACADEMIES

Breaking the Glass Ceiling in African Science: Key Session Insights
On 3 September 2026, NASAC hosted the third Academy Synergy Building Session (ASBS), moderated by Dr Jackie Kado, Executive Director of the Secretariat. The interactive session convened early- and mid-career researchers (EMCRs) and senior academic leaders across Africa to dismantle the systemic and personal hurdles preventing emerging scholars from stepping into strategic governance. Featuring Prof. Priscilla Mante as the keynote speaker, the forum explored how institutional frameworks and individual initiative must align to cultivate intergenerational leadership. Opening the proceedings, Dr Kado set an action-oriented tone, pairing conceptual debates with real-time participant polling and reflective exercises before introducing Prof. Mante, a renowned global advocate for early- and mid-career researchers.

Rethinking Leadership: A Five-Stage Progression
In her keynote address, Prof. Mante dismantled a common myth: leadership is neither an innate trait reserved for a chosen few nor an automatic byproduct of academic excellence. Instead, it is an acquired discipline honed through practical responsibility rather than formal titles. While standard scientific training equips scholars with technical credibility, grant-writing prowess, and publishing credentials, institutional leadership demands a broader toolkit—including organisational intelligence, influence without formal authority, representational acumen, and operational execution.

To bridge this disconnect, Prof. Mante presented a five-stage leadership progression continuum:

• Joining: Gaining basic entry and network access.
• Participating: Attaining exposure to organisational discussions.
• Contributing: Delivering tangible value to working groups.
• Leading: Taking ownership of outcomes and driving projects.
• Influencing: Actively shaping policy agendas and institutional strategy.

While the initial stages build familiarity, true capability develops when researchers transition to taking direct accountability as leaders and influencers. To accelerate this transition, senior academies must institute structured mentorship, including committee shadowing, board meeting observation, and immediate post-task feedback.

From Classrooms to Boardrooms: Unpacking Individual Hurdles
Real-time polling provided a stark empirical snapshot of the current landscape: most participants placed themselves squarely in the joining or participating phases, with zero respondents feeling they had reached the influencing stage.

Floor discussions revealed deep-seated structural root causes. Participants noted that traditional university curricula focus almost exclusively on examinable coursework, leaving emerging scholars with sparse exposure to public speaking, committee governance, or policy drafting. Addressing these gaps, Prof. Mante urged EMCRs to actively seek volunteer roles within university departments and professional associations to build foundational management competencies. Proposal writing and resource mobilisation were also singled out as vital capabilities—emphasising that world-class scientific research without fundraising capability severely restricts an independent leadership trajectory.

Institutional Barriers: Tokenism vs. Authentic Inclusion
The dialogue sharply distinguished between superficial tokenism and genuine structural integration. Prof. Mante pointed out that many academic institutions invite young scientists into governance spaces purely for symbolic visibility—while withholding genuine voting authority, budget allocation, or administrative accountability.

Polling responses confirmed this reality, identifying limited trust from senior fellows and non-transparent nomination processes as the primary barriers locking young scientists into passive advisory roles. To dismantle this dynamic, Prof. Mante championed concrete structural reforms:

• Mandated Seats: Reserving guaranteed seats for EMCRs on executive and steering committees.
• Co-Chairing Frameworks: Pairing senior fellows with young scientists to co-lead working groups.
• Transparent Pipelines: Publishing open calls for all internal leadership positions.
• Governance Orientation: Providing structured inductions on organisational bylaws and parliamentary procedure.

Crucially, she warned against decoupling leadership training from real-world practice, recommending that workshops on science advice or peer review produce immediate, actionable outputs—such as co-authored policy briefs or journal evaluations.

Auditing Regional Academies: Governance Models in Practice

To benchmark institutional readiness across Africa, attendees completed an Academy Inclusion Audit evaluating their home organisations across six key dimensions: representation, voice, decision-making authority, resource allocation, leadership opportunities, and clear progression pathways. Aggregate audit scores categorised most of the participating academies as being in the “emerging inclusion” stage.

Subsequent discussions evaluated the structural legal models currently operating across Africa:

• Constitutional Limitations: Senior academies operate under rigid founding statutes that frequently omit young academies, making formal collaboration reliant on Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs).
• The Ex-Officio Model: Internal integration models often resulted in governance drift and underutilised resources. Consequently, governance has evolved toward appointing young academy Chairs as ex-officio members on senior academy boards—balancing operational backing with mutual accountability.
• Legally Distinct Entities: Establishing a young academy as an independent legal entity working in close strategic alignment with the senior academy has also proven successful in building a track record of operational excellence.

Empirical Snapshot: Baseline Survey Findings
Overall, the aggregated poll data demonstrated that while early-career researchers possess high drive to take on governance responsibility, their progression is systematically constrained by opaque pipelines, sparse mentorship, and institutional gatekeeping. Across member academies, youth involvement remains heavily concentrated in advisory roles, revealing a distinct gap between high formal representation and actual decision-making power or financial autonomy. Addressing this baseline requires transitioning from symbolic consultation to formal institutional mandates, dedicated budget lines, and co-designed policy mechanisms.

Turning Dialogue into Action: The 30-Day Commitment
The session concluded with a practical exercise where participants drafted concrete 30-day personal commitments to redesign specific engagement mechanisms within their home institutions. Dr Kado confirmed that the NASAC Secretariat will aggregate the survey and audit dataset to establish baseline metrics for youth integration across member academies.

In her closing remarks, Prof. Mante delivered a dual call to action: while young scientists must proactively step forward to claim responsibility, senior academies carry the institutional duty to construct transparent, durable pathways that turn passive attendance into genuine strategic influence.

Please click on this link to access the audio recording of the event