Blessing Adanta Odogwu is a lecturer at the Department of Plant Science and Biotechnology at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She holds a PhD in Plant Breeding and Biotechnology from Makerere University in Uganda. For her PhD research she received a fully-funded scholarship by the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Blessing has also been a recipient of many other funding opportunities, including the OKP scholarship to participate in the course “Plant Genetic Resources and Resilient Seed Systems for Sustainable Food Security” organized by Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation, the African Bioscience Challenge Fund fellowship, the Norman Borlaug Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program (LEAP) fellowship, and the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship.
She is currently a full member of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) and an ardent advocate of women and gender mainstreaming in research and technology uptake. Blessing is already mentoring youths in agriculture through the Grooming Leaders in Agriculture (GLA) platform, but would like to widen her mentoring reach. This is why she joined the Africademics Scholarship Ambassador Programme and hopes to make use of her personal experience and the Ambassador training to help excellent Africans achieve their dreams.
In 10 years’ time, Blessing aims to be in a position of influence at an international organisation. A hidden talent that Blessing has, is that she is very good at telling jokes.
Welcome to the Africademics Ambassador Programme, Blessing!
The Scholarship Ambassador Programme
Through the Scholarship Ambassador Programme Africademics trains volunteers from across Africa to become scholarship advisors and mentors. Ambassadors complete a 4-month online course with virtual lectures, case studies and additional activities. Once they have successfully graduated, our Scholarship Ambassadors offer personal support, advice and mentorship for scholarship seekers and applicants in and from Africa.
Our 2022 Ambassador cohort started their training in April 2022 and we are thrilled to have over 90 students and scholars from across the African continent on board this year. In 2021, we welcomed our first cohort of 30 Scholarship Ambassadors who completed their training in November 2021. They now offer free scholarship consultations, mentorship and application assistance for scholarship seekers in and from Africa on a regular basis.
Meet our team of Scholarship Ambassadors here and let us know via our contact form if you would like to book a personal consultation with one of them!
