The Problem

Women remain significantly underrepresented across health research and development in Nigeria and across sub-Saharan Africa — as principal investigators, as research team leads, and as the named beneficiaries of R&D investment decisions. This is not a talent gap. It is a structural one. Women enter research careers in significant numbers but face compounding barriers — limited access to networks, mentorship, funding, and visible role models — that narrow the pipeline at every subsequent stage.



The consequences extend beyond equity. Health research that does not adequately include women researchers produces evidence that systematically underweights women’s health needs, experiences, and biological realities. Addressing the participation gap is not just the right thing to do — it is a precondition for producing better health research and better health outcomes for the populations that research is meant to serve.

Despite growing funder attention to this issue, there is a persistent lack of longitudinal data on what actually works to support and retain women in health research careers. Interventions are designed in the absence of evidence on the specific barriers women face at different career stages, in different institutional contexts, and across different health research disciplines. WiRE is designed to fill that evidence gap while simultaneously addressing it.

What WiRe Is

WiRE — Women in Research and Evidence — is a structured training and longitudinal cohort programme being developed by Gawani Africa in partnership with ThinkNg. It is designed to do two things simultaneously: accelerate the development of women student and early-career health researchers in Nigeria, and generate the longitudinal evidence base needed to understand what enables women to build and sustain research careers on the continent.

The programme operates through ThinkNg’s platform infrastructure and is built around three integrated components:

• A structured training cohort: A skills development programme for women student and early-career researchers, covering research methods, scientific writing, data analysis, and the practical skills needed to connect with and contribute to health R&D opportunities
• A longitudinal population cohort study: A rigorous research design that tracks the careers, experiences, and enabling conditions of WiRE participants over time — generating evidence on the barriers and enablers that shape women’s trajectories in health research in Nigeria
• A platform-enabled opportunity pipeline: Integration with ThinkNg’s marketplace to connect WiRE participants with research projects, industry partners, and funding opportunities that match their developing capabilities

What Makes Wire Different

Most initiatives supporting women in research are interventions without a learning agenda. They provide training or mentorship but do not systematically track whether participants go on to build sustained research careers, and if not, why not. WiRE is built differently. The longitudinal cohort study design means that every cohort of participants becomes a tracked population — their career trajectories, the barriers they encounter, and the conditions that help them succeed are documented over time and fed back into programme design.

This produces something the field currently lacks: credible, Nigeria-specific, longitudinal evidence on what it actually takes to develop and retain women health researchers. That evidence has value beyond WiRE — it informs national policy, funder strategy, and institutional practice across the higher education and health research landscape.

Implementation Research Roadmap

Phase 1: Design (Months 1-6)

Cohort design, curriculum development, institutional partner recruitment, baseline survey design, and ThinkNg platform integration specifications.

Phase 2: Pilot Cohort (Months 7-18)

Launch of the first WiRE cohort with an initial group of women student and early-career health researchers. Structured training, platform onboarding, and baseline data collection.

Phase 3: Longitudinal Tracking (2 Years Upward)

Ongoing cohort tracking, annual data collection, iterative programme improvements, and dissemination of longitudinal findings to inform national policy and funder strategy.

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What success looks like

Success for WiRE operates at two levels. At the individual level: women researchers who complete the programme are better equipped, better connected, and more visible to the research and industry ecosystem than they would have been without it. At the systems level: WiRE generates the evidence base that allows Nigeria’s health research institutions, funders, and policymakers to make better decisions about how to support women’s participation in health R&D at scale.

Grounded in existing work

WiRE is not built from scratch. It is anchored in Gawani’s existing track record in women’s health R&D and research systems strengthening — including a scoping study on women’s voices in health R&D commissioned by PATH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the development of women’s R&D participation indicators for Grand Challenges Nigeria in partnership with SpeakUp Africa. That prior work informs WiRE’s design and gives it a credible evidence foundation from day one.

Who we are looking for

WiRE requires two categories of founding partner to move from concept to implementation: