Proposals for organized sessions are also invited from interested individuals or institutions.

An organized session must have a session organizer who will describe the overall session in the session abstract; a minimum of three individual abstracts and a maximum of five individual abstracts describing the individual presentations of the session, as per the organized session structure described further below.

Please note, however, that we do not accept proposals for plenary sessions.

Abstracts may be submitted in English or French and must be structured as follows:

Structure of individual abstracts

• Title of paper
• Name, institutional affiliation, phone number and email address of the presenting author
• Names of co-authors
• 400-word maximum structured abstract, which indicates the background, aims and objectives of the research, the methods used, the key findings and the main conclusion(s).

Authors should submit individual abstracts online at: https://afhea.confex.com/afhea/2025/cfp.cgi no later than July 31, 2024.

• Title of organized session
• Principal organizer (Name, institutional affiliation, phone number and email address)
• Co-organizers (Names, institutional affiliations and email addresses)
• Session abstract: 400-word maximum structured abstract that provides a summary of the session
• Abstract of each paper (max 400 words): should include the aims and objectives of the paper and the key findings (do not include annexes). The maximum number of papers allowed for each session is 5. 

The proposals for organized sessions should be submitted online at: https://afhea.confex.com/afhea/2025/cfp.cgi. The deadline for submission of proposals for organized sessions is July 31, 2024.

Note that there are different online submission forms for individual and organized session abstracts and the correct form must be used.

All abstracts submitted will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee.

To ensure a high scientific standard of the presentations at the conference, a quality assurance process consistent with the capacity-building goal of AfHEA will be used in the review of abstracts.

Reviewed abstracts will be categorized as follows:

• Accept category (oral or poster): abstracts that meet all the set criteria and for which the reviewers have no doubt about their high standard
• Reject category: abstracts that do not meet the set criteria and which reviewers find are of a low standard

In addition, early-career researchers will have an opportunity to benefit from mentorship and hence get an opportunity to submit and present a quality paper at the conference.

The mentorship process is described below:

• Before submission of individual abstracts: Early-career researchers can opt to use our freely available mentorship program by submitting their draft abstract to the email address: afhea24@gmail.com, with <AfHEA_mentorship> in the subject line by May 31, 2024 to get feedback from established researchers to improve the quality of their submissions and enhance their chances of getting their abstracts accepted. Reviewed abstracts will be returned to authors by June 30, 2024 to enable them to address comments before the submission deadline.
• After acceptance of an abstract for oral presentation, interested early-career researchers can submit their draft PPT presentations to afhea24@gmail.com by November 15, 2024 for review and feedback from established researchers. Reviewed PPT presentations will be returned to presenters by January 15, 2025.
• Early-career authors who participated in the mentorship above may be allowed to make mock presentations on the first day of the conference (before the conference sessions begin).

This process is consistent with AfHEA’s goal of capacity building for early-career researchers.

Participation in the mentorship process is voluntary, but AfHEA encourages early-career researchers to take advantage of this opportunity to improve their skills and increase their representation at the AfHEA conference.

The abstract submissions received for the conference (individual and organized sessions) will inform the organization of parallel sessions, with AfHEA’s conference Scientific Committee determining the technical composition of conference sessions. Applicants for both individual abstract sessions and proposals for organized sessions will be notified of the decision on their abstracts/proposals by October 15, 2024.

In case of any questions or need for clarification, kindly contact:

Ms. Grace Njeri Muriithi,

AfHEA Secretary

Email:conference@afhea.org and cc: afhea24@gmail.com

Web page: https://afhea.org/en/conferences/