SN 4 EP 10: Dismantling Structural Barriers for Early Career African Researchers with Review & Curate Network (RCN)

How are African researchers taking control of how their discoveries reach the community?

In this episode, we explore the work of the Review & Curate Network (RCN), an African-led community supporting the evaluation, validation, and organization of preprints to ensure research is shared quickly, responsibly, and with credibility.

Our host Joy Owango sits down with the leadership of Review & Curate Network (RCN)—⁠Roseline Dzekem Dine⁠, ⁠Shitondo Yahila,⁠ and ⁠Joseph Tolulope⁠—who are at the forefront of building community-driven review and curation systems for African scholarship. They share the journey of how a community seed grant transformed the Rwanda Preprint Club into a pan-African network.

Here are the key things to look out for:

Dismantling Structural Barriers for Early-Career Researchers

Shitondo Yahila highlights how traditional publishing models gatekeep research, creating overwhelming hurdles for undergraduate and early-career scholars. Open science acts as both a disruption and an invitation—offering transparent pathways, mentorship, and equitable participation to ensure young African researchers are not excluded from the scholarly record.

Balancing Speed with Scientific Rigor Through Preprints

Roseline Dzekem Dine addresses the common misconception that preprints lack rigor. By pairing immediate manuscript dissemination with structured, community-driven peer review via platforms like Pre-review, RCN accelerates the visibility of African research without sacrificing quality, strengthening papers before formal journal submission.

Protecting Local and Context-Driven Research

Much of African scholarship is deeply problem-oriented—addressing local health system analyses, pilot implementations, and community interventions. RCN acts as a safeguard for these crucial studies, ensuring that vital context-specific data isn’t discarded or delayed by Western-centric journals prioritizing broad global generalizability over local impact.

Democratizing Scientific Credibility and Power Dynamics

Joseph Tolulope and the team discuss how community-based curation reshapes global power structures. By expanding peer review beyond elite, centralized institutions to include diverse, ground-level African voices, RCN shifts the dynamics of who gets to speak and who gets to be believed in the global scientific community.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Welcome to Mazumgumzo – African scholarly conversations, a podcast that highlights the perspectives of various stakeholders in academia and research fields across Africa through open dialogue on mazungumzo on scholarly communication in Africa.

Joy Owango 

Welcome to Mazungumzo African Scholarly Conversations. I’m your host, Joy Owango, the executive director of the Training Center in Communication, a capacity building trust based at the University of Nairobi, Chiromo Campus, Kenya. Today we are exploring how African researchers are taking control of how their work gets to the community. Our focus is the Review and Curate Network, an African-led community that supports the evaluation, validation, and organization of preprints, helping ensure that African research is shared quickly, responsibly, and with credibility. RCN began in Rwanda as the Rwanda Preprint Club, supported by a community seed grant from ASAPBio, and has since grown into a pan-African network serving researchers across the continent. With us today are the leadership of Review and Curate Network, RCN, and with us is Roseline Dzekem Dine, Shitondo Yahila and Joseph Tolulupe, who are at the forefront of building community driven review and curation systems for African scholarship. Welcome to Mazungumzo, colleagues.

Dine Roseline Dzekem

Thank you. Nice to meet you Joy, and to share in this today’s series.

Joy Owango 

Okay, so before we dive in, I’d love for our listeners to hear your voices. Roseline, let’s start with you. Could you tell us who you are, what you do, and how you became part of the Review and Curate Network?

Dine Roseline Dzekem

Alright. Hi everyone, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today. As Joy has already mentioned, my name is Dine Roseline Dzekem. I am the founder of  the Review and Curate Network. It’s a community that focuses on expanding and building open science practice activities in the African context, however, worldwide. Just a little bit about me. I am a public health and a social science researcher. I am specializing in health research methods with a focus on global health, and I am committed to advancing open science and equitable access of knowledge in the global community. Thank you so much, and I’m happy to be here with you. Over.

Joy Owango 

Thank you. Thank you so much. Chitondo, how about you? What’s your story, and what drew you into this work?

Shitondo Yahila

Right. Thank you so much. So, my story, I think, really began about two years ago. That time I was still an undergraduate medical student at the University of Zambia. So, what happens that during that time, from my early years of undergraduate training, I developed this interest in research, not just like an academic endeavor, but also as a way of trying to contribute meaningfully to healthcare in my context. So I wanted to understand how evidence is generated and how I could participate in shaping it. However, like many other undergraduate students, I faced challenges, so I encountered structural barriers to get to the point where I wanted to be. Coming from a setting where undergraduate students rarely participate fully in research, also because publishing is even like very uncommon. Mentorship is also limited when someone’s trying to navigate the research process, and all that combined together felt very overwhelming, and I didn’t have a clear pathway on how I can contribute to the scholarship world.

In searching for opportunities I came across the Systematic Review Network, which was formerly called the African Community of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses at that time, and that’s that was when I actually met Rosaline. It was through that comment that I learned about the Rwanda Prepping Club, now called Review and Curate Network, and what’s interesting is that when I joined initially, I was joining as a graphic designer to just assist with the graphics and also publicity. At the time I knew very little open science and preference and open review, but as I became more involved, I began to understand the philosophy behind open science. So open science actually resonated with me deeply, especially in the African context. I began to see it as a pathway to visibility, also inclusion, and collaboration. This challenged many traditional systems of scientific publication, such that it provided ways of overcoming these structural barriers that I faced when I first began. So, for me, I would say open science is not just a publishing model, it is both a disruption and also an invitation, so it challenges systems that limit participation, but it also offers a more transparent and equitable way of producing and sharing knowledge. So, in many years, I see it as a quiet protest, but not that one which seeks to dismantle science, but one that seeks to refine it and make it more inclusive for all, or even for, people who are in their early stages of their research.

Joy Owango 

Fantastic, and Joseph, finally tell us about yourself and your role within RCN.

Ogunniyi Tolulope Joseph 

Yeah, thank you so much. My name is Ogunniyi Tolulope Joseph, and I’m a medical library scientist, and also a public health researcher. I think I joined this team via Roseline. So, I met Roseline, I think that should be in 2023 and I got involved in research, so we actually work together on research. I was not actually involved in the pre-review and preprint club  then, so I think I got this information from her to join a live review session, which is organized by pre-review. So I joined the session, I was like, okay, I’ve seen a lot of amazing things done by people in terms of reviewing the preprint, people sharing their opinion. This club, collaborative review process actually ignites my attention. I was like, okay, I’m trying to learn from this perspective. Quite alright.

Before then, I thought I’ll be seeking more knowledgeable research, get involved, and also get to participate in research, get first hand experience, but when I saw that, in this aspect of collaborative review, I was able to learn a lot from people, their concept. One thing about research is that you don’t just get to know everything at once, you learn from other people, you learn from other perspectives.

Realizing this information, I think also during that time, also, there’s this particular paper we are working on, and so for us to get, I think it’s focusing on primary health care in Nigeria, if I remember correctly. Roseline just introduced me to actually preprinting the paper. Well, I didnt know about preprint during the time. So  I said okay, fine. Let me look at how it’s actually been done. So, I got involved in preprinting the article in Africa Archive. After printing it, they asked me to kind of make a call for a review, so that we could get some information that could better straighten the paper, so that we could actually revise the paper and submit to a general publication.

I got involved through that, I joined around September, October, but more like a member. So, as time goes by, I got involved, and I think, it has been very exciting participating in preprint review, and so far I have actually gained so much interest, and now currently I work as a production manager, whereby I see a lot of things in terms of our social media, like LinkedIn, I also oversee some programs, and also in terms of our podcast series, that is actually centered around promoting open science in Africa, basically. I believe that with the current situation, we actually see in this country, having this Review and Curate Network is one of the things, and also other open science advocates in Africa has actually shaped so many things and is currently shaping so many things in terms of open science, and I believe it’s kind of a pathway that I found so interesting, and it has been one of the things that actually grown my career, or boost my career, and also knowledge in terms of research. Thank you.

Joy Owango 

Fantastic. Now, Roseline, how did RCN begin, and what problem were you trying to solve when it was just the Rwanda Preprint Club?

Dine Roseline Dzekem 

Alright. Thank you very much. I’m going to tell us a story about how RCN began and the problem I was intending to solve. I was actually trying to solve a need, a gap that I had identified as a young African girl who was actually coming from a vulnerable community with limited resources and even skills in conducting research and even with disseminating the findings or the knowledge that are being discovered as a result of carrying out those research activities. From a very young age I had always envied and loved research, helping people get solutions to their unanswered questions, and also to be a pathway on transformation of life. So I’m interested in transformative research, and that is how these aspects of open science actually began. The journey started with seeking for systems and collaborators that I could work with in publishing my research article, that reminds me it was around six years back. As a result, I joined the eLife aluminum program. After that program I learned a lot about open science and how it can actually help people get their work being disseminated, being painful, and all the like. As a result, during that interaction, I was able to meet mentors that helped me to get my first article ever put out there. I’m so grateful, and made us full of……..

Joy Owango 

Yes, Roseline? Okay! So it is very clear that the Rwanda Preprint Club was very instrumental in catapulting Roseline’s research work, bearing the challenges that she had faced when she was going to her publishing process. So, Joseph, what was the moment you realized this work needed to grow beyond Rwanda? Was there a specific catalyst or a piece of research that signaled this need? Joseph.

Ogunniyi Tolulope Joseph  12:16

Oh yeah, yeah. Thank you so much, ma’am, for the question. So, early on, when it was still Rwanda Preprint club, we carried a need assessment, that was around 2020. Actually here the opinion of you, of everyone across Seva Institution, either your’e a researcher, you work as a librarian, you work as maybe like a lecturer, and the like, to just find out their opinion about preprint. We actually carried out the survey just to have a more like a needs assessment, a baseline information that could actually tailor where the direction the organization is actually heading towards. So after carrying out this survey, whereby we try to ask some questions regarding the benefit of preprint, benefit of what they want in terms of preprint, what has been challenging so far in terms of preprint. I think with the needs assessment we were able to get around 100 participants, and from that 100 participants we also gave a question that centered around trying to see, because before the onset of this needs assessment, there are diverse people that actually joined the community beyond Rwanda. Rwanda was actually the first start of this program, so about at the end of the day, as time goes by, as the ownership keeps getting interesting, participants from Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, were actually also part of it.

The Rwanda Preprint club was a bit limiting, so we decided to find let’s roll out some little survey alongside with the needs assessment to find out what could be the best fit or the best name to actually give this organization. So then we decide to kind of hear people’s opinion, and at the beginning of January 2024 if I’m right, the name was actually changed to Review and Curate Network, which actually focuses on Africa and beyond, but basically the aspect whereby we have the review and curate, actually comes in the aspect whereby you are interested in reviewing preprint, and also at the end of the day, we have so much interest also in data curation. Just kind of, to show the need for data curation, we had kind of have more like a webinar with Sibu Mabi, if I’m right, that should be a name on data curation, and that actually gives in a perspective to why there’s a need for curation, even when we are doing open science. We tried to blend this to Review and Curate Network, so that we can actually leverage your preprint review to empower ourselves as researchers to gain more knowledge, and also to provide good feedback, good critics to people to authors that were already submitted their paper for preprint review. At the end of the day we are trying to engage ourselves into curating in terms of open science, and this actually formed the basis of the name where we are having it to be Review and Curate Network, and as of now we have so many people across several countries, and yeah, we have so many webinars to actually point us toward the direction of review and data curation.

Joy Owango 

Fantastic. Now, Shitondo, in many global north contexts, preprints are a standard step. For the African researcher, what are the specific risks or barriers they face when sharing work before formal peer review, and how does RCN mitigate those?

Shitondo Yahila  15:42

All right, thank you for that question. To begin with, I would just like to highlight that in 2021, UNESCO and the member states laid out the plans for open science, and the plan was that by March 31^st  2025, all member states should have at least given a report to show the adoption of open science. However, we still see that very few countries are actually in that direction.

Now that brings us back to the to the conversation about preprints. We find that preprints are not a common practice in many African institutions, as we have seen the history of preprints that, most of the programs that have been focused on preprints, usually in mathematics, physics, but when it comes to other sectors, it’s not really much talked about. While UNESCO has encouraged countries to adopt open science principles, the adoption across parts of, especially sub-Saharan Africa, remains too very uneven. So, for many African researchers, find that sharing a preprint can give them a feeling of whereby they think, like, okay, this is risky, and the concerns actually valid on their end. One concern is that of scientific ownership. There is a fear that publicly shared findings before former peer review could expose work who misuse or maybe idea appropriation. Then there are also institutional barriers where I find that many universities have not formally integrated the preprints into research culture, and senior researchers may be hesitant about open sharing before the journal peer review. So that hesitation itself, it has got distance whereby it influences any career researchers also, to adopt this same kind of, let me say, doing science right.

Another thing that comes about, other than just scientific ownership, is genre acceptance, because the question is whether the editors will consider the work that has already been publicly shared, because traditionally we find that journals will not accept a paper that has been shared elsewhere. This is where the Review and Curate Network now plays a supportive role to African researchers, so one of the things that we do is that we collaborate with pre-review. We currently were using their platform to facilitate this structured pre-reviews, and our team and communities, multidisciplinary, whereby it provides timely and constructive and transparent feedback to the people who have shared their preprints for review, then we basically, because sometimes people think like open science is yet to kind of replace the traditional peer review, but no, because traditional peer review is very important. It’s rich history has shown the importance of peer review, so we do not replace traditional peer review, but we are actually complementing it by more open, more timely, and more transparent, right? We help authors strengthen their manuscripts, identify methodological improvements, and also refine clarity before journal submission.

Then the last few points I will say is that beyond reviewing, we also engage in education and advocacy, and this is where I’m going to add onto all of these comments mentioned, that we organize webinars and discussions to sensitize both early career researchers and also senior researchers about how open science can be used and leveraged responsibly. We don’t just look at through, but also talk about research methodology, because that’s where this whole thing comes from, right!  The last point, that which is important, is that we do not see this as our fight alone, but we see it as a collaborative effort with other open science networks across Africa and the global south. Yeah, I think that’s what I would say on the challenges and the mitigations that we put in place.

Joy Owango 

The mitigations, that is really good. And now over to you, Roseline. There’s often a misconception that preprints lack rigor. How does RCN review and curate model ensure that speech doesn’t come at the cost of scientific integrity?

Dine Roseline Dzekem 

All right. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me now.

Joy Owango 

Very well, please continue.

Dine Roseline Dzekem 

Okay, first I would like to say that speed and rigor aren’t inherently opposite. Traditional peer review is slow and not just because it’s careful and like the optimum, but because it is centralized and sequential, as we already know. A manuscript goes to two or more reviewers and waits for a long time, goes through rounds of revisions and other bottlenecks that we might not be able to cover here, so preprints flip that, like the game changer, they make research available almost immediately, but the key innovation is what happens after posting your preprint. So the review and curate model, we just simply encourage researchers to get their work being given attention as soon as possible by encouraging researchers, especially the early career ones, and even those in the undergraduate level, as my colleague had mentioned before, those in the undergraduate, at least in the African context, they will hardly publish their work, so we encourage them to post their manuscripts or their thesis, the dissertations in preprints repositories, where we encourage them after posting that they should then link it up in such a way that we can access them from the prereview.org platform. Once this is being done, we then go to this website and select the preprint, put together a call in our community, our network, commonly our WhatsApp group, advertise it, give people the opportunity to decide whether they want to review this. As a team, we agree on the date, and those who would like to review, after that, the preprint is given careful attention. After all those interested in reviewing the preprint must have gone through.

We don’t see this as just like a method of disseminating knowledge, but we also see it as an opportunity to help them to even publish their work, even in the traditional journal by receiving comments earlier that will help them improve the quality of whatever they are going to be disseminating to the global scientific community. As such, they learn and they get more chances of their work being accepted. In order to protect scientific integrity, we simply already know that all preprints have a DOI, and as well as when it’s been linked to the prereview.org reviewers platform, it’s also given a DOI, so everything has a stamp that you don’t need to worry much about. It is a trusted process, and this is the little bit I would like to say, as far as this is concerned, and I would like to say that they are no risks that someone will say that I am being discouraged from preprinting my work because it works in a way that it helps everyone to learn to gain and progress scientifically. Thank you,

Joy Owango

Thank you. Shitondo. What have you learned about African researchers, their style, their needs, or their hurdles simply by reading and curating their work at this scale?

Shitondo Yahila 

Well, Africa is a very, say, rich continent. We often hear this, but I think also scientifically. Because I’m from the background of healthcare, so I’ll give a perspective from healthcare, right? We know that Africa carries one of the highest burdens of disease globally, yet you find that scientific productivity does not proportionately reflect that burden, and there’s that gap that exists, because first of all, maybe there’s a lack of participation in scientific work, right?

Much of African research is deeply problem-oriented because we are still facing challenges that countries in the West have already solved. This calls for something urgent to be done, and when it comes to African researchers, you find that when they are dealing with these problems is more of providing the solutions, so it is mostly grounded in real challenges. For example, in healthcare, we have got infectious diseases, we have maternal health, and also non-communicable diseases, and how to strengthen our healthcare systems. So, this is there’s a strong sense of responsibility in that work. However, I’ve observed, and other scholars have also observed this, that, there are structural barriers that African researchers actually get to face, and these include limited sustained mentorship, especially for early career researchers, when they’re just starting out. Then there’s also gaps in advance methodological training, and we also see funding constraints that shape study design. And now I think we have seen more challenges with funding, looking at how,a lot of funding has been cut off  to African countries.

Then the last thing again, whichI’m sure you have noticed that there is publishing barriers that slow visibility, and this also speaks to the same issue about the level of our research in Africa, because it’s problem oriented, and most of the challenges that we are sorting out here, in other countries have already been solved, so when papers are submitted in those journals, maybe they did not, because majority of the consumers, they are from the West, so African input may not, add that much value.  These patterns extend beyond healthcare into other disciplines as well, so if we want to see meaningful scientific growth in Africa, we must intentionally invest in supporting African researchers, and this is going to now target these barriers that I’ve stated earlier, which is going to include mentorship, collaboration networks, and also community-driven platforms.

Then yes, so the last thing is that I also believe that, change begins internally. We must strengthen our own ecosystems of support while advancing for institutional reform, and we build this strong internal like momentum, many of the challenges that African researchers get to face, they can be reduced, and not only for the benefit of Africa, but for the global science altogether.

Joy Owango 

Okay. Thank you so much. Now, over to you, Joseph. How is RCN helping African research move from being locally relevant to globally visible without using its specific local context or nuances?

Ogunniyi Tolulope Joseph  29:17

Yeah, thank you so much for that question. So, what we are actually operating in RCN, we actually work in terms of partnership. Now, one thing about research is that it’s very, very important that we don’t just see ourselves more like, someone that is just still learning. We have to kind of collaborate with people, try to understand what is the standard, because one of the things I think we are lacking in Africa is, we lack standardization in terms of our research. But bringing in a global context actually has really empowered members and so many other people in terms of standardizing how we do research. Because, one thing that we have already emphasized in this conversation is that, one of the things we bring on board is the aspect of webinars. As of recent, that was, that should be last month, we organized a webinar on ORCiD ID, which ORCiD ID is more like a global approach to feasibility.

Bringing this idea to the African context is one of the things that could actually improve our feasibility in Africa, get people to know what we are doing in Africa, get people to see how we are tackling challenges and problems in terms of Africa, and how we are bringing out information that would be of benefit to solving so many problems in Africa. One of the things we back on the research is feasibility, and when we do standardization, and also feasibility, we are definitely driving the African context into a global perspective, but still maintaining the context of the African culture. We are not losing the African culture, but we are trying to bring in a little innovation that we actually ensure the standardization and also there’s much visibility,  not just constrained to the African region, but other people. We actually tend to see it.

Now one of the things we actually do is that, with this Review and Curate Network, our context in terms of reviewing has brought more credibility because we review for other regions, we also ensure that other regions also review for our papers. With regard to that aspect, we have to bring about more of information that actually drives research culture, research change, and helps us to actually be seen as a well-oriented research region, because I think that’s one thing that Africa needs. They actually have to see the whole context of everything is just that we need to empower African researchers to actually do beyond what is actually done. We need to empower them, we need to actually bring them to understand the reality of doing a standardized research and also ensure feasibility. So, our scene has actually been a very good part of driving and promoting this thing, and that’s one of our core advocacy. We don’t just want to set for them, we don’t want to box everyone within Africa region, we want to actually express Africa to people, want to actually express ourselves to people, and that we actually be true research and also through feasibility.

Joy Owango 

Okay. Thank you so much, and that is really a good way to get into the next question. That is to Shitondo, and that is, what kinds of  research areas do you think are most likely to be overlooked or lost in the traditional publishing system without a platform like RCN?

Shitondo Yahila 

Right! so we’ll say first of all, traditional publishing systems often prioritize novelty and broad generalizability, because even when early career researchers are learning about what’s a research topic, what characteristics are they supposed to have? These principles are talked about. However, many African research questions are mostly context specific, and it’s that specificity that speaks to the value of the research questions of an African context.

So from going back to what I had said earlier concerning the barriers, I think we can couple this together, talking about what kind of research is likely to be overlooked, and this includes pilot implementation studies, because these studies require resources, and in a context where funding is, a little bit difficult to acquire, it becomes very difficult to go onto such kind of studies. As a result we might see that most of the researchers are going to be avoiding this kind of study, so pilot implementation studies, then we can also have community-based intervention research, which also requires quite a huge amount of resources, then we also talk about district or region level health system analysis, then we can also talk about operational research. However, one thing we know is that these studies, when looked at, initially they may not appear ground breaking globally, but their foundation of a policy implementation and also system strengthening locally, which also I spoke about saying that in the West, the stage at which they are in science, is way ahead of the African context, so there is that mismatch. Then we also have interdisciplinary and policy-oriented research is very valuable, and it sometimes falls between traditional journal categories as well. Then, without platforms that aim to come in to also help researchers get their work published first, and also get recognized, like platforms like our platform, Review and Curate Network. Such work risks being delayed and under reviewed or remaining invisible, which is again against the principles of research, the FAIR principles, which is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and also being Reproducible by supporting preprints and structural community review, we allow this, these types of research to exist publicly, to be read, cited, and inform policy conversations, and stimulate collaboration, even before journal placement. So I think I would say, in that sense, the Review and Curate Network does not just accelerate dissemination, it protects valuable context-driven research from being lost.

Joy Owango 

Okay, fantastic. Now, Roseline, over to you. How does community-based review change the power dynamics of who gets to speak and who gets to be believed in the global scientific community?

Dine Roseline Dzekem 

I like to start by thanking Yahila for this.

Joy Owango

Roseline!

Dine Roseline Dzekem 

Yes, I wanted to say I’m thanking Yahila. Sorry for that. I’m thanking Yahila for emphasizing that the Review and Curate Network doesn’t necessarily only seek to promote quicker dissemination of scientific knowledge, but it’s also serving as a platform for people to learn to gain knowledge on how to even share their, to even write and put forward their scientific work for public consumption.

Back to my question, I would then say that community-based review is changing who has the power in science, basically in two ways. First, who gets to speak, it opens up participation beyond a small group of elite institutions, as you know, and then allowing more diverse and locally grounded voices into the conversation, just as Yahila said, and even people who are publishing in different, in their local languages. Let’s take, for example, Cameroon, that has more than 300 ethnic groups with different languages, as well as Nigeria, and that happens with many African communities, even in Rwanda. Most Rwandans are very conversant with the kinyarwanda language, and they are very comfortable writing and communicating in that language, so it opens space for them. Second, who gets to be believed? I believe that these provide a space where there is a shift from credibility that was being hidden, and then centralized peer review to more transparent community-driven evaluations, where many experts, and sometimes broader communities can weigh in. The result is that authority in science becomes less concentrated and more distributed, as we have all been mentioning above, but it’s not perfectly equal. Okay? So visibility, access, and networks still influence whose voice carries the most weight. Generally, I will say that community-based review doesn’t eliminate power structures, but it simply reshapes them, and then making science more open, as and then promoting the fair principles as Yahila mentioned. Thank you.

Joy Owango 

And as we close, Joseph, what do you hope a young African researcher feels the moment they discover RCN for the first time?

Ogunniyi Tolulope Joseph 

Yeah, thank you so much, ma. I think I would say that’s actually the right place for them to be, because this particular organization does not just kind of provide a platform for them to just review preprint, but for them to learn. We actually offer so many opportunities, so it’s more like a mentorship platform, because one of the things we lack in terms of video research culture in Africa, is mentorship, and this particular platform offers a research mentorship, even beyond. It’s even multidisciplinary, so it’s not just restricted to a particular group of people, it’s not restricted to either public health or a public health researcher, its not actually a life science researcher, it’s general, it’s more of a multidisciplinary platform for everyone to learn, and quite all right, we basically, majority of people within the platform are early career researchers, and we have actually seen them grow beyond who they were when they actually came in, and we believe that this is just a right thing to get started by joining RCN.

Joining RCN is just the beginning, and also a life-changing opportunity for anyone that wants to get into research, because we offer so many opportunities, in terms of learning from people, in terms of getting mentorship, in terms of getting to see what is the global perspective regarding research, the African context in maintaining it, and also being able to push them to see the reality of what it is to be an early career researcher, not trying to kind of limit them because they are early career researchers, but we just wanted them to see that there’s a bigger picture beyond what they are seeing as an early career researcher, and that they could only learn that maybe through RCN, because we have so much empowered early career researchers, so many of them have their ORCiD ID, and even with their ORCiD ID, they can actually, basically see they have reviewed so many preprint, and without preprint, they are not just reviewing just to get recognition alone, but they have gained so many knowledge. I believe that many of us, myself, Roseline, and Yaila, we all came in as an early career researcher, and we are still early career researchers. So, for us to see that this thing is actually one of means, that has helped us to grow over the years, so we also believe this is just the right place for them to be, and this is where we can actually grow, this is where they can actually get the mentorship, the knowledge they need in research, and this is where they can actually thrive, well when it comes to research, and definitely it’s where they will never regret joining RCN, definitely,

Joy Owango 

Yes, so much, and that is what it’s such a wonderful way of closing this podcast. Thank you so much, Tolulope, Roseline, and Shitondo. This has been quite insightful, and we look forward to great developments happening with the RCN. Goodbye.

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