From Zero to One: Lessons Learned on Bringing African Students to International Conferences
The 46th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2024) is a milestone ICSE and will be forever cherished in my heart. For the very first time, we were able to take our Software Engineering community’s Diversity and Inclusion to the next level by supporting students from Africa (other than South Africa) in attending ICSE and joining our research community! 🥳🌍
However, the first step is always the hardest. With the amazing ICSE team (especially the General Chair Rui Abreu), the generous support from ACM SIGSOFT (especially the SIGSOFT Chair Thomas Zimmermann), and Mariam Barry who started this initiative and did the hardest part of connecting us with African universities, we awarded six students across Mali 🇲🇱, Benin 🇧🇯, Senegal 🇸🇳, Côte d’Ivoire 🇨🇮, but only one student from Senegal successfully attended ICSE in the end.
The main difficulties lie in the Visa application in Africa, along with a few other obstacles. But “from zero to one” is a huge step forward, and now we have the entire pipeline in place to continue this wonderful initiative for more ICSEs to come! With the lessons learned, we are very hopeful that our team can bring more and more African students to our beloved Software Engineering community! 🥰 I’m already getting excited and can’t wait to welcome more new faces in the next ICSE! 🥳 More importantly, I believe the lessons we learned from this process can be very helpful for other communities who want to take concrete actions on Diversity & Inclusion to bring African students as well! So on behalf of our entire team, I want to share our story and the lessons learned in this journey to encourage more initiatives to come.🌱💕
How It All Started
It all started when Mariam Barry approached me at ICSE 2023 in Melbourne, Australia. Mariam was attending ICSE 2023 and she was a PhD candidate and Research Data Scientist living in Paris, France back then. I was lucky enough to talk to her, and she opened my eyes to how much more work needs to be done for Diversity & Inclusion. She is very passionate about the issue of lacking African representation at conferences and actively takes action to solve the problem. I still remember her opening line at ICSE 2023:
“Have you noticed that there are no people from Africa? Zero!”
To be honest, I never noticed that. Don’t we have Diversity & Inclusion events, such as BIPOC gatherings? What do you mean? After talking to Mariam, I realized a big gap in our research community: To the best of our knowledge, we haven’t seen any ICSE attendees who currently live in African countries (other than South Africa). Yes, we do have ICSE attendees with African lineage, but most of them currently live in or were born in a non-African country. The people who live in Africa currently are the ones who lack the resources to attend international conferences the most. This is confirmed during my interactions with African students. For example, the student we successfully brought to ICSE 2024 from Senegal 🇸🇳 has never attended any international conferences due to the lack of funding, despite being the first author and presenter of his papers. He was only able to present his papers online during his entire PhD journey.
Interestingly, later during ICSE 2023 in Melbourne, I met Ikoojo Simon, originally from Nigeria 🇳🇬 and is currently pursuing a PhD in Australia. I learned about his experience, especially how difficult it is to conduct Software Engineering research and to attend international conferences. It completely blew my mind. 🤯 Ikoojo was already a lecturer in Nigeria (before he came to Australia for PhD), and has been conducting Software Engineering research on his own! He does not have an academic advisor to teach him how to do Software Engineering research, but he learned by himself and was drawn to the problem of “technical debts”. He found papers to read on his own and is a self-taught researcher! I asked how did he know about ICSE (which is the top 1 conference in Software Engineering). He said “ICSE” appeared a lot in the good papers he read and it must be a good conference! What an inspiring story! It took me 3 years to even get a sense of how to do research with an advisor 😂, and Ikoojo learned on his own and was able to publish his work to top venues! Spoiler alert, he presented at ICSE 2024 and we met again in Lisbon! 🥳
Long story short, there’s enough evidence and motivation to do something about this. Researchers are problem-solvers, aren’t we? ;)
Steps We Took
1. Selecting African Students
From Mariam Barry, we learned that the funding opportunities for attending international conferences do not reach the students in Africa as most of them have never heard of ICSE. The marketing channels we often use (e.g., ICSE’s official Twitter/X account, Software Engineering Facebook Group, SIGSOFT SEWorld Mailing List) assume the audience to be part of the Software Engineering research community to receive such information, but will not work when we want to bring newcomers to join our community. For example, at first, our selection criteria included “conducting Software Engineering research” but we had to drop this requirement since none of the students in the African universities we connected with does Software Engineering research. That was unexpected but further shows how big of an impact our Africa initiative can have!! With one person doing Software Engineering research and the connections they make, we’ll get the ball rolling! 🌱🌳
First-Phase Selection (Dean Recommendation): Shout out to Mariam who made this whole thing possible! Mariam is also the co-founder of Africa Tech Institute, which aims to promote Tech Education’s accessibility to a broader audience in Africa specifically. They shared information about ICSE and our funding opportunities with different African universities during their AI webinar through the Africa Tech Institute platform. With these connections, we were able to get student recommendations from the Dean of the Computer Science department across several top Universities in Africa directly. We asked the Deans of the top 6 universities in Africa and asked for the top 3 students from each university.
📣 I also want to take this opportunity to spread some great news! The Africa Tech Institute aims to expand its reach even further within Africa, hoping to share research news and opportunities with more students, such as the information about our Africa initiative to bring African students to ICSE conferences. They are still looking for more partnerships and connections with African organizations/universities to further improve their reach. If your organization is interested, please contact Mariam Barry. Don’t miss this chance! The African students in your organization will thank you for this act of kindness. 🥰
Second-Phase Selection (Supporting Documents & Interview): With the candidates from the first round, we conducted another round of final selection with the following criteria.
a) Fluent in English communication
b) Has research experience and interested in doing research long term
c) Has Software Engineering research experience would be a plus
I have to give another shoutout to Mariam here! She did the hardest work behind the scenes to review the student applications and interviewed every single one of them for their English fluency. The supporting documents we asked for in the process are the following.
a) Resume
b) Motivation letter
c) Recommendation letters
d) Proof of the student’s status
e) Any other extra documents (published papers or books in English)
In the end, Mariam provided detailed reports of the students and recommended the top 6 students from Mali 🇲🇱, Benin 🇧🇯, Senegal 🇸🇳, Côte d’Ivoire 🇨🇮 as our finalists.
2. Funding Support & Travel Arrangement
I serve as the Co-Chair of ICSE 2024’s Student Mentoring Workshop (SMeW), and our SMeW program has generous funding support from both ACM SIGSOFT and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for students to attend the SMeW workshop and the ICSE conference. 🥰 NSF can only support the U.S.-based students, so it’s natural to allocate ACM SIGSOFT’s funding to support the African students. The funding amount is need-based. We asked for the minimal amount the student needed to attend ICSE and reviewed the details of each student’s justifications. In most cases, students only need partial funding on top of what their advisor and/or department can support.
However, when it comes to those African students we selected, it’s an all-or-nothing situation. The conference expenses are significant for them considering their average incomes, and no other funding is available to support their ICSE trips in their home country. In fact, due to the lack of funding, I later heard from one Ph.D. student from Senegal that he could only present all of his papers online. And this is not all. They also do not have sufficient money to book the travel for ICSE up front and get the reimbursement later. Note that pre-booking the flights and hotel is required for their Visa applications and is time-sensitive.
Here comes another shoutout moment! 🎉 Despite the new challenges we faced, ACM SIGSOFT and the ICSE team stepped in and gave us their full support on this Africa initiative! ❤️ Regarding the funding amount, if we prioritize all 6 African students, it will limit the total number of students we can fund due to the large amount required for African students. We explained the situation and the Chair of ACM SIGSOFT Thomas Zimmermann was able to allocate more funding to support these African students directly! In the process, we also got anonymous donations to support this initiative! In the end, funding was not an issue and we were able to support all 6 selected students across Mali 🇲🇱, Benin 🇧🇯, Senegal 🇸🇳, and Côte d’Ivoire 🇨🇮!! 🙌 Regarding the pre-booking, shoutout to ICSE 2024’s General Chair Rui Abreu who contacted his local ICSE team to arrange all the pre-bookings for the African students. Note that it was during such a busy season for ICSE 2024 planning but Rui was always super responsive and reliable to help us as much as he could during the entire process!
3. Conference Registration & Student Volunteer Opportunity
Conference registration fee is another huge amount for African students. After discussing with ICSE’s General Chair Rui Abreu, we accepted the African students as ICSE’s Student Volunteers and waived their registration fees. If other research communities have a Student Volunteer program as well, I would highly recommend this approach for the following reasons.
✅ It saves large amounts of funding to support more students overall. This is more sustainable since we don’t want to hurt the number of non-African students we can support originally.
✅ The conference experience is likely to be the African student’s first conference, and we all remember how it felt when we didn’t know anybody at our first conference. Student Volunteer program creates connections, friendships, and social opportunities with peers (e.g., the Student Volunteer victory dinner). By the way, I wrote a blog post on “How to get the most out of your first research conference” that also mentioned the benefits of the Student Volunteer program and many other tips! 😉
✅ In my wonderful interactions with the awarded African students, they are very grateful for this opportunity and really want to help our community in the way they can! 🥰 The Student Volunteer program gives them the opportunity to give back and learn more about the conference.
If you want to implement this Student Volunteer approach to waive the registration fees for African students, there are things to keep in mind for the conference organizers as well.
💡 Given the Visa application difficulties for African students (which I’ll discuss next), I recommend assigning volunteer tasks to the African students after their Visas are approved to make sure they can come to the conference to help.
💡 As conference opportunities are rare for these students, conference organizers should be mindful of the workload to make sure these students have enough free time to get the most out of the conference and make connections. This is not a unique consideration for African students. We should always make sure our students are benefiting from the Student Volunteer program, and not overwhelmed with tasks to miss out on their conference experience.
4. Visa Application Assistance
The visa application is usually the conference attendees’ responsibility, and we didn’t plan to get involved initially. However, the Visa process turned out to be the biggest obstacle that needed our involvement in the end. It’s a long story but I’ll summarize the lessons learned with actionable items in the Section “Lessons Learned for Visa Application” below.
To give you a sense of our experience, here are some numbers. We notified the 6 awarded students of their funding support on January 29, 2024 and advised them to make the Schengen Visa appointments ASAP (via Portugal where the ICSE conference was held). The appointment availability was very limited. 5/6 students (from Senegal, Mali, and Benin) had their Visa appointments scheduled for mid to late March. One student from Côte d’Ivoire could not get an appointment slot despite endless emails we sent to the Embassy. On April 5, we heard the first result from a student in Mali 🇲🇱 and it was a rejection! 😭 At that time, it was fewer than 2 weeks before their travel dates! I was very concerned, so I made a Twitter/X post below but we did not get much help from VFS unfortunately.
I also discussed the issue with ICSE’s General Chair Rui Abreu, and Rui had his team contact Portugal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to speed things up (so grateful for this act! 🙏). This action, among with many attempts of emailing and calling the Embassy led to the success of two Visa approvals in the end! One of the two students received his Visa only a few hours before his flight so that he could make it to ICSE! 🥳 The other student unfortunately had a post-surgery complication and could no longer travel to ICSE. To summarize, as of the conference time (Apr 14–20), 2/6 students got their Visas on time (from Senegal, and Benin). 2/6 got their Visas rejected (both from Mali). 1/6 was still waiting to hear back the result (from Mali). 1/6 never got his Visa appointment despite our best efforts including emailing the Embassy, going to the Visa center in person, and emailing the Embassy the needed documents (We did hear back from the Embassy saying there’s nothing they can do to make the appointment. The student is from Côte d’Ivoire).
This unfortunate complication necessitates Visa assistance from the organizers. The usual approach of “apply Visa on your own” may have little luck. But don’t worry! We gathered lots of useful information from the Embassy that can probably be generalized to other countries’ Visa processes (see Section “Lessons Learned for Visa Application” below).
5. On-Site Support
This is based on my experience with Jean Gane Sarr from Senegal 🇸🇳. Jean was the only SIGSOFT-sponsored African student who made it to ICSE in the end, and was absolutely a pleasure to meet! 🤗
As mentioned earlier in the Section “Selecting African Students”, it is very likely that you couldn’t find many African students working on the topics in your research community. But this shouldn’t discourage you from initiating a wonderful Africa outreach program! Everything has a first step, doesn’t it? ;) Be mindful of this as the first research conference can be very overwhelming for newcomers. At ICSE 2024, we accepted all African students into ICSE’s Student Mentoring Workshop (SMeW) program where we had a session to give an overview of ICSE’s program and share tips for newcomers. We also gave out stickers (e.g., “Hire Me”) for students to indicate whether they’re on the job market. We provided colorful pens and markers as well so that students could customize their conference badges, such as writing down their research interests. If your research community doesn’t have such a mentoring program, create one! :) Otherwise, make sure some sort of onboarding process is provided for the African students so that they can get the most out of their conference experience.
Moreover, make sure there is at least one point of contact onsite at the conference to address any needs of the students. For example, the pre-arranged hotel was not within walking distance of the conference venue, and Jean did not have a data plan for the Internet. Uber/Bolt ride-sharing services are the easiest for the reimbursement process of transportation and are quite inexpensive in Portugal. It’s the best option for Jean, but do consider the fact that students may not have a credit card, or have never heard of Uber/Bolt and can have a difficult time setting it up. For these reasons, some level of on-site assistance is required during the student’s stay.
Fun fact about how Jean got to his hotel from the Lisbon airport (without Internet): Someone at the airport had an extra transportation card and gave it to Jean. Jean used it for the metro first, and then took a taxi with cash for the rest of the road and got to the hotel safely :) Plus, Jean happened to be fluent in Portuguese as he studied in Guinea-Bissau 🇬🇼 for 2 years and spoke Portuguese there! So there was no language barrier with any locals in Portugal (a lot of them don’t speak English) and sometimes I had to rely on Jean to figure out where to go haha. It’s a fun story and makes me wonder if I rely on the Internet too much 😂 Anyways, my point is Jean’s success story may not be reproducible for other students and we should make sure they have a local point of contact after they arrive at the conference :)
This section has all the “secret sauce” that we wish we had known earlier. We hope it can help future organizers for this great cause! 🌱🌳🥰
Lessons Learned for Visa Application
1. Check if there is an Embassy in the student’s country *before* award notification & Weigh costs & benefits (maybe a later year’s conference is a better choice)
Believe it or not, not all countries will have an Embassy to process the Visa application. I hate to say this, but it makes the Visa process a lot harder and very unlikely to go through. In our case, 3 awarded students are from Mali and there is no Portugal Embassy to process the Portugal Schengen Visa applications. The students applied through the Netherlands Embassy in Bamako for the Schengen Visa. 2/3 got rejected and 1/3 was still waiting to hear back during the conference time. For the rejection cases, we were able to get a hold of the Embassy and learned that the appeal process can take a whole year to process… None of the 3 students from Mali were able to attend ICSE 2024 unfortunately.
If it’s not a Schengen Visa, the students may not even have a way to apply in their country. Flying out of the country can be a big additional cost that needs to be considered. Furthermore, this case might imply the relationship between the two countries is not that good, making the Visa process more difficult in general. In the case of Schengen Visa, even if the student “successfully” applied through another Embassy, the chances are low as there is very little the conference organizers can do. In our case, we were able to contact Portugal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where the conference was held) to speed up the African students’ cases, but we could not contact other countries’ embassies to do the same.
Suggestions 💡: Before sending out the award notifications, double-check the Visa situation of the awarded students to understand whether it will be too difficult for the students to obtain their Visas on time. I know, I know… This is very unfortunate, but the good news is the conference location usually rotates every year and it might be a better opportunity later for the students to attend the conference in a different country. Organizers should maintain a pool of the selected students from previous years with Visa difficulties and prioritize them in the next year. This saves student selection time as well so that you can get the Visa process going earlier!
2. Book refundable flights and hotels
Given the uncertainty of the Visa process, we recommend booking refundable flights and hotels with a good cancellation policy. This time at ICSE 2024, the student who successfully attended ICSE got his Visa only a few hours before his flight! This could happen and we don’t want to give up too early. So hotels that are fully refundable when canceling one day prior are recommended. In the case when the student gets their Visa on the same day of their flight, we can always book the hotel on the same day as a plan B. This will require the travel agent to be available when it’s close to the conference time to adapt to any changes quickly (including working on weekends).
3. Contact Embassy Helps!
In retrospect, the success of the Visa applications highly depends on which Embassy was handling the case. For example, the student from Senegal was not able to get a Visa appointment on time when they released the available dates, but he was very on top of it and contacted the Embassy consistently throughout the process. He was able to get an appointment because of his calls and emails. He also learned early what additional documents were needed and provided them ASAP. Two weeks before the conference, we (the conference organizers) also started contacting the Embassy and Portugal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to speed up the case. In the last few days, I called the emergency number of the Embassy (later I learned it was for Portuguese citizens 😂), but it was very useful and they promised to get it done by the last Friday before the conference! They did fulfill their promise which directly led to the milestone at ICSE 2024 with Jean’s attendance! We are very grateful for the Embassy officers who listened to us and made it happen. 🙏❤️
On the other hand, there are Embassies that we couldn’t get a hold of or never replied to emails. Some Embassies do reply but say there is nothing they can do. So, contacting the Embassy can also give you an early indication of the likelihood of getting the visa on time.
4. Provide Additional Proof
During my calls with the Embassies, I learned that Schengen Visas for African students are indeed more difficult than usual and the Embassy would reject it if they have any doubts that the students may not return to their home country. The officer was kind enough to tell me what evidence may help increase their chances of getting the Visa. Besides the required documents listed on the Embassy’s website, you should provide as much evidence as possible to show the student has a good home life and will return to their home country after the conference. Such supporting documents include but are not limited to the following.
- For the conference organizers: Besides the regular visa invitation letter, the conference should also provide a financial support letter, indicating the students are awarded to attend the conference and their entire trip will be fully funded. Please give as much evidence as possible to show the reasons for their attendance at the conference. Personally, I think mentioning the Africa initiative to explain the cause may help as well. The documents are reviewed by humans after all so you never know :)
- The 2 students who got their Visa approved both had jobs and showed their ongoing salary. If possible, provide evidence to show good financial standing as much as you can, including multiple bank accounts, ownership of properties and other assets, ongoing salaries, etc (basically anything you can think of to show you have enough money…).
I know I know… This is very ironic because the whole point of the Africa initiative is to provide funding for those who lack funding. But before a better channel is in place to support African students, we do have to follow the regular Visa process to try our best to provide what we can. - Recommendation letters from the student’s advisor and university to show good standing as a student, and even better if you have financial support from your advisor/university. One of the students was asked to provide recommendation letters although the information was not listed on the Embassy’s website.
That’s it! It is a lot of work but I promise it’s worth it!! Think about the impact in 10 years or so. 😉 We sincerely hope other research communities can join us to welcome more brilliant African students to our conferences together! 🌍🤝 True Diversity & Inclusion is not just talking, but doing 🥰 If you have any questions about the process, please feel free to reach out. If you’re moved to support our Africa initiative for future ICSE conferences, you can contact me too and we will have ways to spread your kindness. ❤️🙏
“From Zero to One” is a historical moment and we couldn’t be more proud of our Software Engineering (SE) community to make it happen! 👏 Can’t wait to welcome more African students to our beloved SE community. Let’s shape the future together, shall we? 🙌
