African PhD Program Draws Strong Interest, Morocco Among Top Applicants

The enthusiasm of the applications for the 100 PhDs for Africa program testifies to the importance of the Excellence in Africa (EXAF) initiative. Launched jointly by UM6P and EPFL, this program that financially and scientifically supports doctoral theses in Africa concerns all engineering sciences. In total, 37 countries were represented across Africa. "This call was a great success," said Jérôme Chenal, co-director of the program at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), stressing that out of these 37 countries, five were massively represented. These are Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Morocco and Benin.

Apart from these five countries, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Senegal have about forty applications each. Many candidates also come from East African countries, notably Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. On the side of Southern Africa, several applications mainly from Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa were submitted. Not to mention Madagascar.

Regarding North Africa, the applications mainly come from Morocco, ranked third, with 70 applications. After that come Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt. For this first call, about 29% of the candidates are women, a rate far from the goal of parity, but which nevertheless marks a good start. Thus, "the large number of applications reflects the ambition of our African youth to meet the challenges for the development of our continent. Our commitment at UM6P is to put our skills and resources at the service of these young people to support the development of research and innovation in Africa," said Hicham El Habti, President of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and co-director of the EXAF program.

It should be noted that the first call for applications is already closed and the EXAF team has already started the study of the files for the selection of quality proposals. Only the selected applications will be forwarded to EPFL professors for the interview. In addition, the doctoral students will be entitled to co-supervision by an EPFL professor, as well as various events organized by UM6P.