Expressions of interest for the AERC-World Bank Visiting Scholars Program 2026 close on 6 September 2026. AERC has said late applications will not be considered, so treat that date as firm.
Selected scholars spend four to six months at the World Bank working inside the Office of the Chief Economist for Africa Region, known as DECAF, while developing their own research on African economic development.
Before you read any further, one filter decides everything. This fellowship is open only to researchers already inside the AERC network, and you need an active AERC research project that has reached at least the interim or post-fieldwork stage. If you are an African economist with no AERC affiliation, you cannot apply to this call, however strong your work is. I would rather tell you that in the first hundred words than after you have read two thousand.
Two errors doing the rounds
Some listings for this fellowship have Kenya as the country of study. That is where AERC itself is headquartered, in Nairobi. It is not where you go. The residency is at the World Bank, and the Africa Region Chief Economist’s office sits at World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C. If you are planning visas, family arrangements or teaching cover around Nairobi, you are planning around the wrong city.
Several sites are also labelling this fully funded. AERC’s own call does not publish a stipend figure, an allowance, or a travel budget anywhere. What it does say is that scholars comply with the terms of an applicable consultancy contract, which tells you the financial arrangement is contractual and settled individually. More on that below, because it matters.
What AERC is
The African Economic Research Consortium is a Nairobi-based institution that builds economic research capacity across sub-Saharan Africa. It runs collaborative graduate training, including the Collaborative PhD Programme that this call explicitly names, and it funds thematic research by African economists.
That structure explains the eligibility rule. AERC is not running an open international competition. It is offering three of its own funded researchers a placement, and the World Bank is providing the desk, the data and the colleagues. You are being selected from a pool AERC already knows.
What the fellowship actually involves
Scholars join the DECAF team and take part in its activities, including capacity-building work and collaboration with peers doing analytical work on World Bank Regional Flagship Studies.
The obligations are specific, which is useful because it tells you what a successful application looks like. While you are there you are expected to revise your draft paper and submit it both to the World Bank Working Paper Series and to a ranking journal. You present at least one seminar on your own research. You contribute to ongoing research and analytical work in the Africa Region, help develop a repository of research interests, and meet the terms of your consultancy contract.
Read that first obligation again. The programme is built around one paper you already have in draft, taken from working state to publication. That is why the application asks for a draft paper rather than a proposal. You are not pitching what you might study. You are showing them what you are already most of the way through.
Who can apply
Three conditions, all of which must hold.
You must be an AERC researcher, and the call specifies that this includes researchers from the AERC Collaborative PhD Programme. You must have an active AERC research project that has reached at least the interim or post-fieldwork stage, or the final research paper stage. And your project has to be pertinent to the research agenda of the World Bank Africa Region and to what the call describes as imperatives for sustained African development.
The second condition is the harder gate. Plenty of researchers have an AERC connection somewhere in their history. Far fewer have a live project sitting at post-fieldwork or final paper stage right now, in August 2026, which is what the call asks for. An idea will not do. A completed and published paper is past the point of use, since the whole design is about getting an unfinished paper over the line.
How many awards, and why the numbers conflict
You will see two figures quoted. AERC’s description of the programme says three researchers visit every year. The 2026 call says up to two awards will be announced for the 2026/2027 cohort.
Both are accurate and they describe different things. Three per year is the programme’s general capacity. Two is what this specific cohort is offering. Last cycle’s call, which closed on 1 September 2025, advertised up to three for 2025/2026.
So plan for two places. Against an entire continental research network, that is a very small number, and it should shape how much effort you put into the draft paper rather than the covering statement.
Is it funded?
AERC has not published the financial terms.
No stipend amount appears anywhere in the call, and neither does a travel or accommodation figure. The single financial signal is that passing reference to an applicable consultancy contract, which suggests terms get agreed scholar by scholar rather than set as a flat published award.
Sites describing this as fully funded are making a reasonable inference, since a four to six month international residency would be difficult to run otherwise, but an inference is what it is. Ask AERC directly about the terms before you commit to anything, particularly if you would need to arrange unpaid leave from a university post or cover dependants for half a year.
What to submit
Your expression of interest needs four things.
A two-page statement of interest. Keep it to two pages, since a panel reading against a firm limit notices when you ignore it.
A draft paper on a subject pertinent to the research agenda of the World Bank’s Africa region and to the imperatives facing African development. This is the centre of your application.
If you teach a relevant course, the curriculum or course materials you would like to improve while at the World Bank. This is conditional, so skip it cleanly if you do not teach rather than padding it.
A copy of your updated curriculum vitae. Update it properly. A CV that stops two years ago undercuts a claim about an active project.
How to submit
Email your package to the AERC Research Department at abbi.kedir@aercafrica.org, copying research@aercafrica.org.
Copy the second address. Applications sent to one inbox during a busy call are the ones that go missing, and there is no portal here to prove you submitted. Keep the sent email and any acknowledgement.
Send well before 6 September. AERC has stated plainly that late applications will not be considered, and an email that lands at one minute past midnight in a different timezone is a bad way to lose a fellowship.
Making the application competitive
With two places available, the draft paper carries almost all the weight. A few things follow from how the programme is designed.
Choose the paper that is closest to done. The fellowship exists to convert a draft into a World Bank working paper and a journal submission inside six months. A panel reading two drafts will prefer the one that plausibly finishes. Ambition is worth less here than proximity to completion.
Map your topic onto the Africa Region agenda explicitly. Do not leave the reader to work out the connection. Your statement of interest should name the flagship studies or policy questions your work speaks to, and say what DECAF’s data and colleagues would let you do that you cannot do from where you are.
Say what specifically you need from the World Bank. Access to a dataset, a methodology someone there has developed, a co-author. Vague enthusiasm about world-class resources reads the same from every applicant.
Be concrete about the seminar. You will present once while you are there. Saying what you would present, and to whom it matters, shows you have pictured yourself in the building.
What goes in the two pages
Two pages is tight for an academic used to writing at length, so decide early what you are giving up.
Open with the paper. Its question, its data, where it currently stands and what remains before submission. A panel deciding between two applicants needs that in the first paragraph rather than on page two.
The middle should do the matching work. Name the Africa Region themes your paper speaks to and the specific World Bank resources or people that would move it forward. This is the section where most applications go soft, because it is easier to write about your own research than to demonstrate that you have read what DECAF actually publishes.
Close with the practical. When you could travel, what your institution has agreed about leave, and what you would leave behind in publishable form. Panels are choosing someone who will finish, and evidence that you have thought about logistics is evidence that you will.
Leave out your full biography. Your CV is already in the package and repeating it wastes a page you cannot spare.
If you are not eligible yet
Most people who find this page will not be in the AERC network, and there is no way to shortcut into it before September.
The route in is AERC’s own programmes. The Collaborative PhD Programme is named in this call as a source of eligible researchers, and AERC’s thematic research grants are the other main channel. Both operate on their own cycles through aercafrica.org, and both take considerably longer than a month. If a World Bank residency is genuinely where you want to end up, the AERC network is the thing to join first, and this fellowship becomes reachable in a later cycle.
In the meantime, funded postgraduate study is the more realistic near-term route for most people. Several of the Chinese Government Scholarship programmes fund Master’s and PhD study outright, including CAS-ANSO at CAS institutes, Xi’an Jiaotong University and Renmin University. North China Electric Power University runs several awards including the CSC and Beijing Government scholarships.
If your interest is research on higher education systems rather than economics specifically, MARIHE is an Erasmus Mundus Master’s with a monthly stipend, and its deadline of 21 September 2026 falls just after this one.
For researchers who would rather build a postgraduate profile at home first, UNIJOS postgraduate admission for 2026/2027 is open, and the full programme list is worth reading before you assume you need to leave the country.
Planning for a residency abroad
Four to six months is long enough that the practicalities need thinking about before you apply, and not after an offer arrives.
A residency at World Bank headquarters means a US visa. Processing times from African posts vary a great deal and can run to months in some cities, so find out what the wait looks like from where you are before assuming any start date is achievable. AERC has not said when the residency begins. That is precisely why you want your own information early.
If you hold a university post, talk to your head of department now rather than in November. Half an academic year is a serious absence, and teaching cover is easier to arrange with notice. That conversation also gives you something useful for the statement of interest, since being able to say your institution has agreed in principle removes a doubt from the panel’s mind.
Think about dependants and about what happens to your other commitments. Supervision of graduate students, ongoing fieldwork, and any grant with reporting obligations all continue whether or not you are in Washington.
None of this needs resolving before 6 September. Knowing the shape of it does, because a fellowship you cannot actually take up is worth nothing.
Timeline
Applications close 6 September 2026. AERC has not published a decision date, an interview stage or a start date for the residency, and the 2025/2026 cohort’s call was similarly quiet on scheduling.
Work backwards from September rather than waiting for detail that may not come. Give yourself two weeks for the draft paper and a week for the statement, and send in late August.
Questions people are asking
Where is the fellowship based? At the World Bank, in the Africa Region Chief Economist’s office. World Bank headquarters is in Washington, D.C. Listings showing Kenya are showing AERC’s own location.
Can any African researcher apply? No. You need to be inside the AERC network already, with an active AERC research project at interim, post-fieldwork or final paper stage.
How long is the residency? Four to six months.
How many scholars are selected? Up to two for the 2026/2027 cohort. The programme’s general capacity is three a year.
Is there a stipend? AERC has not published one. Terms appear to be handled through an individual consultancy contract. Ask before you commit.
Do I need to be teaching? No. Course materials are requested only if you teach a relevant course.
What is the deadline? 6 September 2026. Late applications will not be considered.
Where this information comes from
Everything above is drawn from AERC’s own call for applications for the 2026 Visiting Scholars Program, cross-checked against the previous cycle’s call and against the programme description on aercafrica.org.
Three claims circulating on other pages that AERC’s call does not support. That the fellowship is based in Kenya, which conflicts with a residency at the World Bank’s Africa Region office. That it is fully funded, which no published figure confirms. And that three awards are available this cycle, which was the 2025/2026 number rather than this one.
Where AERC has stated nothing, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
Apply
Email your two-page statement, draft paper, course materials if relevant, and updated CV to abbi.kedir@aercafrica.org, copying research@aercafrica.org, before 6 September 2026.
Before you write anything, do one thing today. Check what stage your AERC project is actually at and whether it satisfies the interim or post-fieldwork condition. If it does not, this cycle is not yours, and the useful move is starting on the Dangote Cement Engineering Research Competition or a postgraduate route instead of spending three weeks on an application that cannot pass the first filter.
I am Jude Chinecherem, a final-year MBBS student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I know what it feels like to want an education your family cannot afford. When my parents could not pay for my schooling, I had to learn how to find scholarships and work the system out on my own, with nobody to guide me. I came out the other side, and now I share everything I learned so the next student does not have to figure it out alone. This is the advice I wish someone had given me back then.
