The British Commonwealth Fellowships

Summary

The Commonwealth Fellowship Programme allows for for mid-career professionals from low and middle income countries to spend a period of time at a UK host organisation working in their sector for a programme of professional development. In partnership with the University of Salford, through the CSC Programme, K4C has hosted over 150 Ugandan and Tanzanian Health professionals in the UK between 2013 and 2024, including midwives, nurses, doctors, health facility managers, record keepers, laboratory and orthopaedic technicians, teachers, social workers, climate change scientists and policy makers. These staff have travelled from our partner organisations to the UK for between 1 and 6 months to complete educational courses, such as diploma and Masters modules, attend conferences and training programmes and undertake other activities to enhance their knowledge, skills and experience. Each fellowship has been supported by the British Commonwealth Professional Fellowship Scheme which provides funding to cover Fellows’ travel, accommodation, subsistence and the direct costs of the training programmes.

Programme Structure

The structure of each fellowship is bespoke, designed to meet a specific need that has been identified in advance either by K4C or the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. Wherever possible, we link Fellows into our existing charitable activities and ongoing projects. For example in 2024, we hosted 4 fellows from prosthetics and orthotics backgrounds (which links to our wider work on rehabilitation of amputees) and 4 fellows from medical and nursing backgrounds who focused on prevention identification and management of diabetes (thus linking to our ongoing diabetes project).

Previous groups of fellows have focused on areas such as respectful maternity care, cervical screening, antimicrobial stewardship, public health, sexual and reproductive health, cell salvage, tropical medicine, girls’ education and welfare, climate change and data collection and analysis. K4C maintains a close relationship with all Fellows once they return home after their Fellowship and provides ongoing advice, support and careers development. Many Fellows continue to support our projects longer-term, either as staff, key stakeholders, advisers or consultants.

Fellowships 2025

From February to May 2025, Knowledge for Change hosted five Fellows from Uganda, who all came from and worked in Fort Portal and Kampala. The candidates included K4C Nurse/Midwife Angela Mugumba, Dr Augustine Ssemujju, Lecturer Edson Kasomyo, Nurse Lettie Kwaiwia, and Nurse Sarah Ngadire. Building on K4C's existing ongoing work on neonatal sepsis, the Fellows participated in a multi-disciplinary programme designed by the K4C UK team, including attending training workshops, Masters-level lectures and academic sessions run at the University of Salford, and made numerous site visits to healthcare facilities in the aim to better understand the complexities of neonatal sepsis, spread awareness of how it can be mismanaged - in both the UK, and the Ugandan context - and provide education and expertise on how healthcare workers can more accurately identify sepsis before it poses a greater impact on the wellbeing of the neonate, and thus usher in more effective intervention.  Specifically, the Fellow's programme will focus on building expertise in the early identification, prevention and management of neo-natal sepsis. Subjects of Infection-Prevention-Control, EDI, trauma, sepsis, physical examination of the newborn, acute illness management, record keeping and care pathway management were all covered over the course of the three months in the UK, and transferable skills in leadership, data management and evidence-based practice (research), were engaged and enhanced. The Fellows have since returned to their work stations and loved ones in Uganda, and continue to maintain a close relationship with K4C staff both on the ground in Fort Portal and Kampala, and in the UK too, where the teams have provided ongoing professional support and encouraged their participation in our ongoing healthcare programme work.

See the photo below of the 2025 CSC Fellows, visiting the NICU in Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, London!

Previous Fellowships 2024

In 2024, K4C and University of Salford together hosted eight Fellows from Uganda, and Tanzania, including K4C Administrator and prosthetics user Richard Insingoma, Winnie Deborah Iraguha Matovu, Aladino Jose Manhica, Dr Ahlaam Ali Amour, Mr Hasan Mhunzi, Mr Stanslaud Francis Saria, Miss Jane Mbabazi and K4C Nurse/Midwife Stella Bonabaana.

This program focused on training a multi-disciplinary team to develop a preventive and contextually relevant version of Manchester’s “Amputation Reduction Strategy”. Diabetes is fast emerging as the primary cause of lower-limb amputation in LMICs. Diabetic Foot Ulceration (DFU) and resulting limb loss represents a major fiscal threat to public health systems and has catastrophic consequences for livelihoods. The Fellowship proposal built upon and integrates the work arising from two highly successful previous Fellowship Programs (on wound care and prosthetic limb manufacture). The wound care work extended to the specific challenges of identifying and managing diabetic ulcers (led by nurses) whilst the prosthetics and orthotics work extended to an entirely new area of service development (namely the skills in ‘off-loading’ orthotics). The goal was to establish, for the first time in Tanzanian and Ugandan public hospitals, Diabetic Foot Clinics designed to interrupt the journey from a diabetes diagnosis to limb amputation. 

Additionally, the Fellowship aimed to build on Ackers’ work on supply chains. Supply chains are overlooked in global health as the focus is on medical ‘treatment’.  COVID-19 drew public attention to the role of supply chains in health systems. Ackers’ work on laboratory strengthening during COVID-19 focused attention on the stark impacts on LMICs.  Overseas Development Assistance has had the unintended consequence of undermining supply chain development (through reliance on donations). This undermined the potential to build manufacturing capacity and local supply chains in essential drugs, devices and consumables. The program brought together a multi-disciplinary, cross-national team, to identify ‘low-hanging-fruits’ in supply chain development supporting a model for scale-out to other contexts/products. Building on previous fellowships (in Uganda) and relationships (in Tanzania and Mozambique) K4C aimed, in this Fellowship, to demonstrate the ability to stimulate supply chain development in a specified range of commodities (orthotics; IPC consumables, wound dressings and antibiotics).  

See the photos below!

Upcoming Fellowships 2026

Knowledge for Change will be hosting five Fellows from Tanzania and Uganda, from February to May 2026. This year's particular focus will be on Mental Health, and will be carried out in collaboration with Arts for the Blues, a creative arts-based group intervention for depression developed by arts therapists, psychologists, artists and researchers at the universities of Edge Hill and Salford in the North West of England. We are currently reviewing our applicants and are excited for this next programme!