Global Health Mentorship Programme

Mentorship is a key component of scientific development and scientific leadership. Building on 5 successful mentorship cohorts since the start of the initiative at H3D in 2019 the H3D Foundation continues to manage an African-wide Global Health Mentorship Programme.

To date, we’ve successfully matched 120 early- to mid-career scientists from Africa with mentors from around the globe. Mentees undergo scientific leadership training and are matched with industry partners from the pharmaceutical and global health industry to provide specialised mentorship in the following five thematic areas:

1. the scientific process
2. scientific communication
3. personal interactions
4. career progression
5. scientific responsibility

Becoming a mentor 

Mentors are internationally renowned senior subject matter experts from industry and academia.

Mentors should want to learn about the R&D context in Africa and have a strong personal commitment to sharing their knowledge and expertise for the future success of the continent.

While the five themes mentioned above are proposed as pillars of the mentorship, further themes relevant to the mentee may be explored.

Read our report in Nature Medicine 2022 to learn more about how this program provides tangible impact to the professional and personal development of mid-career drug discovery scientists in Africa.

Calls for applications from new and returning mentors are published on our LinkedIn page.

Becoming a mentee 

The mentee and mentor must work together to develop a relationship that fosters freedom of inquiry, critical evaluations, and personal and professional integrity. Mentees must take the initiative to build a strong relationship based on mutual trust and respect. This includes arranging meetings with their mentors at least every 4 weeks to discuss progress towards their goals.

Mentees have a responsibility to structure their mentorship relationship to align with maximising their daily work as well as their training and career goals. They must strive for the excellence that will merit the intensive involvement of their mentor in their future success. It is important that mentees are aware of the legal and ethical aspects and responsibilities that underlie their research. They must exercise the highest integrity in collecting, analysing, and presenting research data.

Calls for applications from new and returning mentors are published on our LinkedIn page.

Matching mentors and mentees

Careful matching of mentors and mentees is important to ensure mutual benefit from the relationship. In the Global Health Mentorship Program, the program team uses the following tactics to facilitate this process.

• Mentees rank their mentorship needs according to the 5 thematic areas.
• Mentors and mentees describe themselves using their curriculum vitae or professional social media links such as LinkedIn or Google Scholar.
• Mentees submit a confidential ranking of their choice of mentor to the program team, who make the final allocation of mentor and mentee pairs based on the rank, interests and scientific discipline.
• Finally, all participants are offered the opportunity to change their partner after an initial trial period.
• At any point in the program, mentors and mentees are welcome to reach out to the program organisers if the relationship is not working and they would like to switch mentors.

Monitoring and Evaluation

The Global Health Mentorship Program program is actively monitored and evaluated by the program team, who collect information while maintaining confidentiality of the content discussed during the meetings. The following tools and techniques are used.

• Online surveys of participants at regular intervals to gather quantitative evidence of the frequency and method by which mentors and mentees interact.
• Spontaneous, ad hoc feedback from time-to-time.
• At the end of the program, recorded virtual interviews of mentors and mentees (separately or together) using a structured interview format. All interviews are conducted by the same person to ensure consistency.

The programme has been supported by the Gates Foundation (4th cohort). Cohorts 5 and 6 are jointly managed by H3D Foundation and CP+Associates, and sponsored under the RAFIKI Alliance:

This project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON-INFRA-2024-DEV-01 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No. 101188390 and from the Swiss Confederation Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research EAER State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI.

*For current and upcoming cohort