28 October 2025

By Dr. Fiona Wanjiku Moejes, Chief Executive Officer, Mawazo Institute

Through the Mawazo Institute, African women researchers are transforming ideas into innovations that support global sustainability goals.

In Kiswahili, “Mawazo” means “Ideas”, and for women in many parts of East Africa, the connotation has often been a negative one. When a woman is deemed to have too many “mawazo”, she is deemed to be counterculture, and a troublemaker. However, time and again, I have seen that this is just the type of woman that the world needs to change course, disrupt industry, and innovate. At the Mawazo Institute, where I work as CEO, we answer the question, what would happen if we funded women with “mawazo”?

In my own research journey, I have encountered the power of turning research into impact, and the need to see people I can relate to, do it before me. A chance meeting with a Kenyan PhD student, who shared what the journey involved and the depth of inquiry it enables, is one of the key reasons I went on to pursue my own PhD. I honestly had never considered doing a PhD, but as with the women we support, seeing that it was possible, became part of my own journey of eventually joining a PhD programme.

In Africa, there is unfortunately a large gap between research outputs and government or public initiatives. According to the World Bank, African countries only invest an average 0.45% of their GDP on Research and Development. Early in my career, I was drawn to tangible impact, from studied research: my Master’s degree project was demonstrating how a microalgae species could be a renewable source of biodiesel. It was this thinking – the connection between theory and reality – that drove me toward a PhD programme in Ireland that was part of a larger project funded by the European Commission where I was one of two students who were based in industry for our PhDs.

After I graduated with my PhD, I still felt a little bit removed from how the research projects I was working on translated to improving people’s life experiences. So, I made a big change and moved to an exciting opportunity in the Comoros Islands where I managed a marine resource programme dedicated to helping fishing communities – particularly fisherwomen – to reconnect with their marine resources and supporting them to use data and research to support their decision-making when it comes to how they can live sustainably with their marine environment. This was science and research in action – in a real, tangible way.

In 2020, when COVID-19 interrupted my time in the Comoros, I moved back to Kenya and began to learn more about the Mawazo Institute. Given my own history as a researcher invested in ensuring my work had real impact, I connected intrinsically to the women that the organisation supported, and its mission to changemaking founded in research.

The curiosity, the critical thinking, and analytical skills of African women researchers coupled with their lived experience as African women makes them incredibly powerful changemakers.” 

At Mawazo, we want to continue moving Africa – and the world – to become more sustainable and drive development. The foundation of Mawazo’s work is that the technical expertise, the curiosity, the critical thinking, and analytical skills of African women researchers coupled with their lived experience as African women makes them incredibly powerful changemakers.

Since I joined, Mawazo has grown into a network of 152 African women PhD students and PhD graduates from 28 countries at African institutions across the continent – including Francophone and Lusophone Africa. We provide researchers with professional development, and training in topics such as personal leadership, budgeting and financial management, grant writing and management, policy engagement, science communications, and participatory action research, and give them access to funding to support their research journeys. We also create opportunities to support the translation of their research and their ideas into policies, media engagements, processes, products, and services that impact their communities, their sectors, their countries, the continent, and the world.

Now, in my fifth year at Mawazo, I continue to look beyond, and see how research can impact development on the continent. Both in the work of our Fellows and Alumni, and also in my own professional ambitions: inspired by the women I work with at Mawazo, I co-founded Mawimbi Ocean Innovations, a social enterprise pioneering climate-smart, community-centered, and traceable seaweed farming in Lamu in northern Kenya.

---

Dr. Fiona Wanjiku Moejes will deliver a keynote at the U21 Global Research Senior Leaders’ Meeting, taking place at the University of Johannesburg from 5–7 November, on the topic of Global Partnerships for Equitable and Inclusive Progress.