The Australia Awards are a whole-of-government initiative bringing together scholarships and fellowships offered by DFAT, the Department of Education and Training and ACIAR. The Australia Awards are a key pillar of the aid program, helping to meet the long-term human development needs of Australia’s developing country partners. In 2015–16, the aid program offered around 2,031 new Australia Awards to students in 56 countries with over 4,000 awardees in Australia at any one time. Seventy-seven per cent of Australia Awards recipients come from the Indo-Pacific region. The Australia Awards program expensed $328.9 million in 2015–16. Over 1,600 Australia Awards Scholarships awardees successfully completed their studies in 2015–16 (98 per cent success rate).
Figure 24: Australia Awards by region, 2016
Contributing to women’s advancement
The Australia Awards contribute strongly to women’s professional advancement. The opportunity to live and study in Australia for an extended period of time not only builds women’s technical skills and capabilities, but also develops personal skills and attributes critical to women exercising leadership27. For the 2016 Australia Awards scholarships round, 57 per cent of scholarships were offered to women.
People-to-people links
The Australian Government has long recognised the importance of engagement with alumni and people-to-people links. In 2015-16, DFAT helped strengthen alumni relations through the provision of $597,000 in grants to more than 45 posts. This will complement the people-to-people links established through the Government’s New Colombo Plan.
DFAT continues to track the development contributions made by alumni and the linkages they maintain with Australia. DFAT has designed and launched the Global Tracer Facility. The facility will streamline future tracer studies across the global Australia Awards program.
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