Dear Readers,
Welcome to the June 2021 issue of THRiVE News, a publication of the THRiVE consortium. This is a time when Uganda and Kenya are struggling to cope with severe phase two of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Both countries are experiencing rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 among young people leading to symptomatic and more severe disease than before.
The pandemic has disrupted ways of life they had always taken for granted, negatively impacted their education and their mental health and wellbeing.
To fully understand their lived experiences during the pandemic requires involving them as much as possible in the in the entire research cycle of COVID-19 related projects. Unfortunately, the role of young people in research in general has received relatively little attention in Africa. They have strengths which have been little explored and yet would otherwise enrich the research and also the optimization of its impact on communities.
In this issue two articles focus attention on this conundrum and help to shine a light on this relatively neglected area. For the last five years THRiVE has encouraged and supported its doctoral and post-doctoral fellows to engage school children in research.
This approach is aimed at producing a cadre of next generation researchers who value the role of public engagement in research and more so are enthusiastic about including young people on their research teams. There is good reason to believe that THRiVE’s approach has great value and bodes well for research in Africa during the remainder of the 21st century.