AGNES Intra-Africa Mobility Grants for Junior Researchers: Up to EUR 3,000
Historical reference: doctoral candidates from sub-Saharan Africa could receive EUR 2,300 to EUR 3,000 for a one- to two-month research stay in another sub-Saharan African country. The 2025 call closed on 30 November 2025, and no 2026 round is published.
AGNES Intra-Africa Mobility Grants for Junior Researchers: Up to EUR 3,000
Status: historical reference; 2025 call closed
There is no open call for the AGNES Intra-Africa Mobility Grants for Junior Researchers. The official programme page still labels the 2025 call closed and gives its deadline as 30 November 2025 at 23:59 GMT. AGNES announced the 2025 awardees in a news post dated 18 March 2026, after the Selection Board Meeting held on 10 March 2026. The opportunities archive has no newer mobility-grant call than the 30 September 2025 posting, so no 2026 call has been announced on the official site. This page is therefore a historical reference, not a live application listing.
The official 2025 call included a Google Form for online submission, but the call is now marked closed, so that link is not a current route to apply. Do not treat an aggregator copy of the form URL as live. The pages to monitor for a future announcement are the AGNES programme page at agnes-h.org/intra-africa-mobility-grant and the opportunities archive at agnes-h.org/category/opportunities.
When a new call does appear, expect it in the last quarter of the year. AGNES posted its 2025 call on 30 September 2025 with a deadline two months later, and posted the 2024 call on 14 July 2024. The network has also run off-cycle supplementary rounds: a supplementary 2024 mobility call went up on 13 February 2025, and the resulting supplementary awardee list was released on 26 September 2025. In other words, September and October are the months to check most carefully, but a mid-year supplementary round is not unprecedented. Nothing on the AGNES site commits the network to an annual cycle, and no 2026 dates have been announced.
What AGNES is and who funds it
AGNES is the African-German Network of Excellence in Science, a network built around African scientists with ties to German research institutions, particularly alumni of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The Intra-Africa Mobility Grant is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH). That funding source shapes the selection criteria: applicants are expected to show that their research matters for the development of their home countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The programme runs alongside other AGNES schemes. Do not confuse them. The AGNES Junior Research Grant is a separate, smaller award of EUR 1,000 for scholars who completed a PhD within the past three years, and it is awarded by nomination from AGNES founder members rather than by direct application. There is also an AGNES-BAYER Science Foundation Research Grant for biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture. Only the Intra-Africa Mobility Grant described here was open to direct applications from doctoral candidates in the 2025 call.
What the grant pays for
The mobility grant funds a research stay of one to two months at a university or research institute in a sub-Saharan African country other than your own, working with an experienced researcher who acts as your scientific host. The research must form part of your doctoral work. AGNES lists bench work, laboratory studies, use of library resources, and writing up your thesis or part of it as acceptable activities.
The published budget ceilings for the 2025 round were:
| Length of stay | Maximum grant |
|---|---|
| 1 month | up to EUR 2,300 |
| 1.5 months | up to EUR 2,650 |
| 2 months | up to EUR 3,000 |
These figures cover everything: travel, subsistence, accommodation, local transport, and health insurance. One detail that catches applicants out is the research cost allowance. If your host institution requests one, EUR 100 per month is deducted from your total for Humanities and Social Sciences, or EUR 200 per month for Natural and Life Sciences and Engineering Sciences, to cover bench fees. That money goes to the host institute, not to you, and it comes out of the same ceiling. A two-month engineering stay with a full bench-fee request therefore leaves roughly EUR 2,600 for your own travel and living costs. Budget accordingly.
The grant is a one-off payment and cannot be used retroactively to fund a stay that has already happened.
Two tracks, and who is eligible
AGNES operates two parallel mobility grants:
- General AGNES Intra-Africa Mobility Grants for Junior Researchers — open to male and female candidates.
- Special AGNES Intra-Africa Mobility Grants for Junior Researchers — open to female candidates only.
Female applicants may apply to either or both, though they can hold only one award. Male applicants may apply to the general track only. The AGNES Governing Board states that it aims for 50 percent inclusion of female researchers across both grants, on merit.
Eligibility, as published in the most recent call:
- You must be a national of a sub-Saharan African country.
- You must be officially registered for a doctoral degree at a university or tertiary institution in sub-Saharan Africa at the time of application. Only current doctoral students qualify.
- You must have at least one article already published from your thesis work in a non-predatory journal. AGNES states plainly that it will only consider journals indexed by SCOPUS and Web of Science.
- Your work must be demonstrably relevant to development in sub-Saharan African countries.
- The proposed research must be work you cannot carry out in your home country.
- You must have an identified scientific host and a proposal and work schedule that the host has agreed to. Applications without a confirmed host are not considered.
All academic disciplines are eligible, including Sciences, Humanities, Law, and Social Sciences. Every document must be in English.
Worth noting: the call text requires an experienced researcher as scientific host at an institution in another sub-Saharan African country. It does not state that the host must hold formal AGNES membership. AGNES members and AvH alumni are the natural pool to approach, and the programme is explicitly framed around AvH alumni mentoring junior researchers, but do not rule out a strong host purely because their name is not on the membership list. Confirm the requirement in the wording of whatever call is live when you apply.
There is no geographical quota. AGNES has, however, said it particularly welcomes applications from countries it considers under-represented in its grantee pool: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique, Mauritius, Mauritania, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe. If you are from one of these countries, say so early in your application.
Required documents for the closed 2025 call
The 2025 call specified a complete application package with a combined maximum size of 12 MB:
- Research proposal, in English, no more than five pages, outlining the proposed research activity and a work schedule for achieving its aims at the host institution. Your scientific host must agree to the proposal and timetable in writing.
- CV, in English, using the official AGNES template downloadable from the call page. A standard academic CV is not accepted in its place.
- Official proof of registration for your doctoral degree.
- Official academic transcripts covering undergraduate and any postgraduate study. If your transcript is in another language, supply an official explanation of the grading system in English.
- List of published articles in non-predatory journals, with an electronic copy or screenshot of at least the title and author page. Articles not indexed in SCOPUS and Web of Science are disregarded.
- Travel cost quotes — two quotes for the return journey between your country of residence and the host country, by land or economy-class flight.
- Estimated cost of living at the host institute, covering rent, meals, local transport, and health insurance. Valid health insurance for the research stay is expected of every grantee. Hosts and host institutions are expected to help you find affordable accommodation and set realistic subsistence estimates.
- Letter of invitation from the scientific host, in English, confirming that workspace will be available for the stated period and including a binding declaration of any research cost allowance the host institution is requesting.
AGNES states that applications that do not follow the guidelines, or that are missing a required document, are automatically rejected. That is not a soft warning — the network repeats it in every call.
Timeline from the completed 2025 cycle
The 2025 round is a useful template for how the calendar tends to run:
- 30 September 2025 — call published on the AGNES opportunities page.
- 30 November 2025, 23:59 GMT — application deadline.
- 10 March 2026 — AGNES held the Selection Board Meeting. Only selected candidates were notified.
- 18 March 2026 — AGNES published its announcement of the 2025 grant awardees following the Selection Board Meeting.
- 30 April 2026 — earliest permitted start date for funded research stays.
- 30 September 2026 — latest permitted completion date for funded research stays.
That is roughly a two-month application window, a two-to-four-month wait for a decision, and a five-month band in which the stay must take place. If a comparable future call appears, use this only as a planning guide until AGNES publishes its new dates.
What to do while there is no open call
The waiting period is the useful part of this process, because the two things that sink applications — no host and no eligible publication — both take months to fix.
Secure a host now. Approach three to five researchers whose work genuinely overlaps with yours, at institutions in sub-Saharan African countries other than your own. Write to each individually with a specific ask: the technique, instrument, collection, archive, or dataset you need and why your own institution cannot provide it. A host who has already agreed in principle can produce an invitation letter in days once a call opens; a cold approach in November will not.
Get the paper out. The publication requirement is a hard gate, and the indexing requirement is stricter than many applicants assume. Check that your target journal appears in SCOPUS or Web of Science before you submit, not after acceptance.
Draft the proposal against a realistic scope. One to two months is short. A proposal that commits to analysing a defined sample set on the host’s instrument, or to completing two thesis chapters using an archive you cannot reach at home, reads as feasible. A proposal promising three new techniques and two manuscripts does not.
Price the stay honestly. Get real flight quotes for both legs, ask the host institution about guesthouse rates, and remember the bench-fee deduction. If your realistic total exceeds the ceiling, state how you will cover the gap rather than shaving the estimate.
Watch the right pages. Check agnes-h.org/category/opportunities and the programme page every few weeks from about mid-September, and follow the AGNES news page for supplementary rounds announced off-cycle.
Contacts
Questions about a specific call went to Joel Anthony, Programme Manager, at [email protected]. General questions about AGNES went to Prof. Zachary Getenga, Secretary of AGNES ([email protected]); Prof. Alexandra Muellner-Riehl, Co-Chair ([email protected]); and Prof. Dr. Odunayo Clement Adebooye, President and Chair ([email protected]). These addresses were published with the 2025 call; verify them against the current call page before writing.
For programme details and any new announcement, go to agnes-h.org/intra-africa-mobility-grant.