Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP) 2026/2027 — $25,000 Research Grant for Young African Researchers

If you are a young researcher from Sub-Saharan Africa working in education policy, economics of education, or evidence-based decision-making — and you are 35 or younger — there is a two-year fully supported fellowship that will fund your research, connect you to Stanford University advisors, send you to two of the world’s most prominent international conferences on education economics, and pay you a $25,000 research grant on top of up to $25,000 in covered programme expenses.

That is a total package of up to $50,000 in funding and support over two years — for research you are already committed to doing.

The application deadline is 30 June 2026. This post covers everything you need to know to apply well before that date.

What Is the Africa Fellows in Education Program?

The Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP) is a two-year research and policy development fellowship run by the Global Education Analytics Institute (GEAI) in collaboration with Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP). It is designed specifically for young African researchers who want to build expertise in education policy analysis, evidence-based decision-making, and the rigorous use of data to improve educational outcomes on the continent.

The programme is not a scholarship for study — it is a fellowship for researchers who are already working or affiliated with a government, research institution, or university in Sub-Saharan Africa, and who want to deepen their analytical skills, expand their international networks, and produce high-quality research that actually influences education policy in their countries.

The distinction matters. AFEP is not sending you abroad to get a degree. It is funding you to do research at home, backed by mentors from Stanford University and a network of African and international researchers and policy advisers.

What AFEP Actually Provides — In Full

The AFEP package is structured around two parallel tracks: financial support and professional development support. Here is the full breakdown.

Financial Support

The $25,000 research grant is yours to support your research and evaluation project — covering data collection, fieldwork, research assistance, and other direct research costs as specified by the programme. The additional $25,000 in covered expenses handles the programme infrastructure: mentorship fees, travel to international conferences, and in-country workshop participation.

Professional Development

International conference attendance: Fellows attend two of the most prominent international conferences on the economics of education. Being funded to attend these conferences is significant in itself; they are the venues where the global education research community meets, where findings are presented, and where careers are built through networking. Access is normally expensive and competitive; AFEP covers it.

Short course training: Fellows participate in a series of short courses specifically designed for their professional needs, covering evaluation methods, research communications, incentive structures, and a series of lectures on testing and performance measurement. These are not generic academic modules — they are targeted at the specific skills that education policy researchers need to be effective.

Mentorship from Stanford University: A team of advisors from Stanford University — one of the world’s leading research universities with a particularly strong programme in education policy and economics- provides direct support and supervision during and after the fellowship period. This is not a token advisory arrangement. It is structured mentorship from researchers operating at the highest level of the field.

Local scientific mentors: While in their home countries, fellows also work with local scientific mentors who understand the specific policy context, institutional environment, and data landscape of the fellow’s country. The combination of international academic rigour and local contextual knowledge is what makes AFEP’s model distinctive.

International research networks: The fellowship explicitly connects fellows to networks of researchers and policy advisers operating internationally — giving you relationships that outlast the two-year programme period and open doors to future collaborations, publications, and career opportunities.

The Structure: How the Two Years Work

The fellowship is organised around two parallel tracks that run simultaneously throughout the two years.

In-Country Activities

While based in your home country, you develop and carry out a research and evaluation project under the supervision of the programme and with support from your local scientific mentor. This is the core intellectual output of your fellowship — original research on an educational problem in your country that contributes to evidence-based policy development.

The research project is yours. You identify the problem, develop the methodology, collect the data, and produce the findings, with structured support and supervision from your mentor team. By the end of the fellowship, you should have a completed, high-quality piece of research that can be submitted for publication and shared with relevant policy stakeholders in your country.

Regional and International Activities

Running alongside the in-country work is a programme of regional and international engagement — the short courses, conference attendance, and network-building activities described above. These activities are designed to give you the skills, connections, and international exposure that your in-country research context may not provide on its own.

The combination of home-country research relevance and international network access is what makes AFEP more valuable than either a purely local fellowship or a purely international one.

Who Can Apply: Eligibility in Full

The eligibility criteria are specific. Check all of them carefully before investing time in your application.

Nationality: You must be a national of a Sub-Saharan African country. The fellowship is explicitly for researchers from this region, not the broader African continent as defined by the African Union, but specifically Sub-Saharan Africa.

Age: You must be 35 years old or younger at the time of application. This is a hard cap; there are no exceptions.

Academic qualification: You must hold a Master’s or PhD in a relevant field with a strong quantitative focus. Relevant fields include economics, education economics, public policy, statistics, applied social science, and similar disciplines where quantitative methods are central. A humanities or qualitative-only background is unlikely to be competitive.

Quantitative skills: Beyond the formal qualification, you must demonstrate experience with quantitative data analysis. This means hands-on experience with statistical methods, regression analysis, impact evaluation methods, econometrics, or similar. The programme trains you to be more rigorous, but it expects you to arrive with a baseline quantitative foundation.

Research interest: You must demonstrate a genuine interest in education policy research and analysis. This is more than saying you care about education; it means having done, or planning to do, research that examines educational outcomes, school quality, learning measurement, teacher effectiveness, or related topics from a policy-relevant, evidence-based perspective.

Institutional affiliation: You must be affiliated with a government, research, or higher education institution in Sub-Saharan Africa. Independent researchers without an institutional home are not eligible. Your institution is part of what makes the in-country research component viable.

Language: Proficiency in English is required.

Gender: Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. The programme explicitly notes this — meaning female applicants with equal qualifications to male applicants will be favoured in competitive selection situations.

How to Apply: What You Need to Submit

The application is submitted through the PEP intranet system. Before you begin, download the full Call for Applications document from pep-net.org for the complete terms of reference and submission instructions.

Your application consists of three components:

1. Two-Page Statement of Interest

This is your case for why you should be selected as an AFEP fellow. It should cover:

• Who you are as a researcher, your background, your quantitative skills, and your research experience to date
• Why education policy research matters to you, specifically, not generically. What drew you to this field, and what keeps you in it?
• What you hope to gain from AFEP, in terms of skills, networks, and research development
• What you will bring to the programme? What perspective, experience, or research capacity do you contribute to the AFEP network?

Two pages is a tight constraint. Every sentence must earn its place. Vague claims about passion or commitment will not survive the word count — replace them with specific evidence of your engagement with education policy research.

2. Two-Page Essay on an Educational Problem in Your Country

This is the most distinctive component of the AFEP application and the one that will most clearly differentiate competitive applications from weak ones.

You are being asked to identify a specific, real, consequential educational problem in your country — and write about it in a way that demonstrates your analytical thinking, your policy awareness, and your potential as a researcher who can contribute to solving it.

A strong essay will:

• Define the problem precisely. Not “education quality is poor in Nigeria” but a specific, measurable manifestation of a problem, learning outcomes at a specific level, teacher absenteeism in a specific context, the relationship between school fees and dropout rates in a particular region.
• Situate it in the evidence. What does existing research say? What data exists? Where are the gaps?
• Identify the policy stakes. Who is responsible for addressing this problem? What decisions are being made, or not made, that your research could inform?
• Sketch a research approach. How might you begin to study this problem rigorously? What data would you need? What methods would be appropriate?

This essay is also implicitly the beginning of your fellowship research project. The problem you identify here is likely to become the focus of your in-country research during the fellowship. Choose something you are genuinely motivated to investigate, not something that sounds impressive but that you have no personal connection to.

3. Detailed and Up-to-Date CV

A comprehensive academic and professional CV covering your education, publications, research experience, employment history, quantitative skills and tools, conference presentations, and any other relevant professional activities. For a research fellowship application, the CV should be more detailed than a typical job application CV — include all publications, working papers, conference presentations, and research projects even if they are not yet published.

Tips for a Competitive Application

Start your essay with the problem, not with yourself. The two-page essay on an educational problem is your opportunity to demonstrate research thinking immediately. Do not spend the first half on background about yourself; get into the problem in the first paragraph.

Be quantitatively specific in your statement of interest. AFEP is looking for researchers with quantitative skills. If you have used specific methods — difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, randomised controlled trials, structural equation modelling, or even solid multivariate regression analysis — name them and describe what you used them for. Vague claims about “experience with data analysis” are much weaker than “I used panel data regression to estimate the effect of teacher training on student test scores in my Master’s thesis.”

Choose an education problem that connects to existing AFEP themes. AFEP is organised around evaluating educational research, using performance data, and introducing rigorous evidence into decision-making. Problems that involve measurement, evaluation, and data-driven policy decisions are the most natural fit. Problems that are purely structural, political, or qualitative in nature are less aligned with the programme’s methodology.

Apply early. The deadline is 30 June 2026 at 23:59 GMT. The PEP intranet system can experience high traffic near deadlines. Submit your application at least three to five days before the deadline to avoid technical problems.

Female applicants — the programme explicitly encourages you. If you are a qualified female researcher, apply. The explicit encouragement in the programme documentation means that in competitive situations between equally qualified candidates, female applicants will be given priority.

Who AFEP Is Ideal For

Based on the eligibility criteria, the programme structure, and the stated aims, the ideal AFEP fellow profile is:

A researcher in their late 20s or early 30s, affiliated with a university, research institute, or government ministry in Sub-Saharan Africa, holding a Master’s or PhD in economics, public policy, or applied social science with demonstrated quantitative skills, who has an identified education policy question they want to investigate rigorously — and who needs funding, mentorship, methodological training, and international connections to do it at the highest possible standard.

If that describes you, this fellowship is worth a significant application effort.

Why This Fellowship Matters

Education policy research in Sub-Saharan Africa is consistently underfunded, under-mentored, and under-connected to the international research community. The result is a gap between the quality of evidence that could inform educational decisions and the quality of evidence that actually does.

AFEP is explicitly designed to close that gap by funding local researchers to produce rigorous, contextually grounded research with international-level methodological support, and by connecting those researchers to a global network that elevates their work and amplifies their influence.

For a young African researcher in this field, AFEP is one of the most purpose-built fellowship opportunities available. The $25,000 research grant is valuable. The Stanford mentorship is valuable. The conference access is valuable. But perhaps most valuable of all is being part of a cohort of African researchers working on similar problems — a peer network that continues long after the fellowship ends.

FAQ

Is this fellowship open to Nigerian researchers? Yes. Nigeria is a Sub-Saharan African country, and Nigerian researchers at universities, research institutions, or government ministries are eligible to apply.

Can I apply if I only have a Master’s degree? Do I need a PhD? A Master’s degree in a relevant field with a strong quantitative focus is explicitly listed as sufficient. A PhD is also accepted but not required.

What counts as a “relevant field”? Economics, education economics, public policy, statistics, applied social science, and similar quantitatively oriented disciplines. Pure humanities or qualitative-only fields are less likely to be competitive.

Is the $25,000 research grant paid as a salary or as a research budget? The grant is a research grant; it is intended to fund your research project activities, not to serve as a personal salary. The covered expenses of up to $25,000 additionally fund mentorship, conference travel, and workshops. Check the full Call for Applications document for specific terms of how the funding is disbursed.

What is the application deadline? 30 June 2026 at 23:59 GMT. Apply well before this date to avoid technical issues with the submission system.

Where do I submit my application? Through the PEP intranet system at pep-net.org. Download the full Call for Applications document first for complete submission instructions.

Can I apply if I work for a government ministry rather than a university? Yes. The fellowship explicitly includes government institutions alongside research institutions and higher education institutions as qualifying affiliations.

When will I find out if I was selected? The application deadline is 30 June 2026. Results timelines are not specified in the available programme information; check the full Call for Applications document for outcome notification details.

For more information and application: 

Visit the official website of the Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP) 2026