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Transcript For: Interview with Jermaine Jones on Applications to Africa

Valerie and Tony interview Jermaine Jones about the Fulbright program to Africa.

Tony and Valerie interview Jermaine Jones (Africa)

Tony: Welcome to the Fulbright US Student podcast. We are your hosts,

Valerie: Valerie Hymas, Senior Program Manager responsible for Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia.

Tony: And I’m Tony Claudino, Director of Fulbright Student Outreach. In this podcast, we’re interviewing Jermaine Jones, who is the Program Manager for Africa. Jermaine, thank you, welcome to the show.

Jermaine: Thank you. Good to be here.

Valerie: So, Jermaine, can you tell us… Africa. Huge, huge part of the world. What kind of fields of study do you see main trends in. Are there any fields of study that you get a lot of applications in?

Tony: Public health seems to be a big field.

Valerie: Yea, I would think that would be a field that you would get lots, but let Jermaine talk. Let’s hear from him.

Jermaine: You’re right Tony, public health is one of the more popular fields from year to year. We also tend to get a fair number of applications in Anthropology, African Studies, History, Political Science, Environmental Studies/Ecology, Economic development, economics, so Africa is pretty much open to a wide range of fields but those are probably the big ones in terms of the most popular ones.

Tony: Any countries that are…

Jermaine: Well,

Valerie: Any hot countries? Where’s the strongest competition or where do you have the most applications?

Jermaine: Well, South Africa is by far the most popular country in the region, and by popular I mean the one that we receive the most applications to, vis a vis the number of grants available for it so it is hands down the big boy on the block as far as sub-Saharan Africa is concerned. We also tend to get a fair number of applications to Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. Obviously they’re some of the largest anglophone, English speaking countries, in the sub-Saharan African region. I’d have to say that Senegal and Mali also tend to get a fair number of applications as well, so. South Africa again is hands down the most popular country in the region, and that’s one of the reasons I encourage people interested in that country to be aware of the competition for grants to that country. And they might therefore wish to consider other countries in the region for which there’s less competition such as Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique.

Valerie: Wonderful places to go.

Tony: But aren’t the Mozambique applicants competing against the Botswana applicants as well. Isn’t a regional competition or…

Jermaine: It is a regional competition and what that basically means is that there’s no fixed number of grants for any country in the region, excluding South Africa. We expect to offer I’d say between 50 and 70 grants for the coming academic year, 2008-2009. And what we’ll basically do is try to distribute those grants as evenly as possible among the different countries in the region.

Valerie: What kind of grants are available to the African countries? Are there any English teaching assistantships or are they straight up regular full Fulbright grants?

Tony: English teaching would be popular in Africa.

Valerie: It would be, yes.

Jermaine: It would be, but I’m afraid that there are no ETAships available anywhere on the continent. It’s a real pity. So that basically means that if you’re going to apply for a Fulbright to sub-Saharan Africa, you can only apply for one of the standard full grants for research and/or study.

Tony: When do they start their grants? Let’s say I was awarded a Fulbright to Mozambique, would I start in September or does it vary according to the country or …

Jermaine: It usually varies according to the student and their project needs. Most people, and this is true worldwide I would assume, tend to start their grants usually in the fall, maybe between August and October. But you could theoretically begin your grant as early as, for the 2008-2009 year, as early as let’s say mid to late summer of 2008 but absolutely no later than the end of March 2009. So there’s pretty large window with which to work, but again, the big exodus is usually in the fall.

Tony: And they usually work with you, and it depends on the project.

Jermaine: That’s correct. That’s right.

Valerie: Are there opportunities for multi country grants, where a candidate would spend time in Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa; are there any regulations of those types?

Tony If I were doing a public health project, I’d want to go to Mozambique, Angola…

Valerie: You might want to do a comparative study. Yea, exactly.

Jermaine: That’s true, there certainly are multi-country possibilities in sub-Saharan Africa, and actually every eligible country could be part of a multi country proposal with the exception of South Africa. In other words, if you want to apply to South Africa, you can only apply to that country alone. Having said that, there are, in my opinion, some major drawbacks to submitting a multi country proposal. The first of which is that it’s the responsibility of each candidate to make sure that they have a host country affiliation lined up with each country. Now for Africa that can be difficult enough for one country, when you start tacking on a second or a third country, it can be that much more difficult for obvious reasons. And also for many of these countries, it is the student’s responsibility to secure research permits and research clearances and that usually only comes into play once they’ve been offered a grant, but again that can be a fairly time consuming and labor intensive process and they’ve got to keep that in mind as well. The third consideration is the fact that they have to receive approval from each country to which they apply, and if one country out of the 2 or 3 that they apply to says no, then that can really throw a wrench into the entire works of their ultimately receiving a grant. And one fourth, final consideration is the factthat if they were to receive one of these grants they would have to spend significant blocks of time in each country, in other words, there’s no country hopping or frequent shuttling back and forth between countries allowed.

Valerie: All fantastic advice.

Jermaine: So you know three months in Zimbabwe, three months in Botswana and four months in Tanzania. Or whatever.

Tony: So they couldn’t go back and forth?

Jermaine: Exactly, they could not do that.

Tony: I had a question about, you mentioned the affiliation, that they’d have to secure their own affiliation.

Jermaine: That’s right.

Tony: Do they affiliate with multinationals; I mean there are a lot of non-profits, multinational companies in Africa. Who have they been affiliating with, that you’ve seen?

Jermaine: Given the nature of this program, most grantees tend to affiliate with universities in their host country. However, depending on the country it’s possible to affiliate with other kinds of institutions. For instance we’ve had grantees who’ve affiliated with NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, with government ministries, archives, research centers, museums, things that of that nature so those are all possibilities, they don’t have to be purely academic institutions, again depending on the country. And that’s really where the student would really be very well advised to look at and read the affiliation section of the country to which they are considering applying very carefully. One other thing about the NGO thing, you mentioned multinational NGOs and sub-Saharan Africa is really one of the exceptional cases in the world of students be allowed to affiliate with organizations that aren’t based principally in the country of application. I’m not a big fan of that, but it’s a possibility. So in other words, someone going to Madagascar could theoretically affiliate with the Smithsonian Institute because they do a lot of projects in that country. The thing is that they’d need to make sure that they get an affiliation letter from the Smithsonian’s satellite office in Madagascar, it cannot come from the United States. And they should also make sure that their affiliate office in their host country has personnel that is primarily of people from the host country and not a bunch of ex-pats from the US or Europe because that’s not going to meet the criteria or objective of this Fulbright program.

Valerie There is another issue that I’ve heard you talking about in the past that sort of sets sub-Saharan Africa apart from some of the traditional guidelines and policies of the program and that’s prior experience in the host country. I’ve heard that that’s not such a detriment to some of the countries within your world region. Can you talk more about that?

Jermaine: That’s absolutely right actually. A lot of other countries around the world, I mean when you have a lot of prior experience, I’d say anywhere between 6 months to a year, if not more, that can sometimes hurt you, if not be the kiss of death for a Fulbright application. For sub-Saharan Africa, just given the difficulties of adjusting to and living in these countries for a 10 month grant term, we found that some prior experience can actually be a necessity in some cases. So we’re a little bit more lenient as far as that goes. However, when we get into the realm of like a Peace Corps type range of prior experience, like 2 years or more, then I encourage people to try to consider other countries outside of the country in which they had that extended period of time, where hopefully that prior experience can still be transferable but not a liability for them. For instance if someone did a 2 year Peace Corp stint in Mali, I’d encourage them not to apply for a Fulbright grant to Mali, but to another country hopefully in francophone West Africa, such as Togo, or Benin, or Senegal. Again, where their prior experience wouldn’t be a liability for them, but where they could still transfer their skills and experiences to that somewhat analogous francophone country.

Valerie: Tony, another question!

Tony: Yea, what about… there are some countries, that I believe, that are unlisted. Can you explain that?

Jermaine: In the brochure, as well as on our website, there are certain countries that don’t have country summaries either again in the brochure or in the handbook. For those that are not explicitly listed as being off limits to applicants at any degree level, bachelors, masters or PhD, those are countries to which people may apply, on a case by case basis, but only if they’re at the advanced graduate level. In other words, if you’re applying at the BA level and you want to submit an application to Rwanda, that’s not going to work out. You have to consider another country in which there is a country summary. But let’s say someone wanted to apply to a country such as Rwanda that’s not listed in the brochure, and not listed as being completely off limits, then they could submit an application to us, again if they’ve received approval to do so from IIE and if again they’re at the graduate level, either masters or PhD.

Tony: Or finishing up with their masters, right?

Jermaine: Correct, correct.

Valerie: So candidates interested in applying to one of the non-listed countries who meet those criteria should be contacting you as a first order of business, to get that approval.

Jermaine: That’s exactly… please contact me before they submit an application and make sure that they are in fact able to go ahead with their application.

Valerie: Great.Well thanks so much for coming in Jermaine, I think we’re going to be talking to you in regards to your other world region, the Near East, very soon.

Jermaine: OK, look forward to it.

Tony: Thanks Jermaine.

Jermaine: Thank you much folks.