Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Access to computational training and research-computing mentorship remains uneven across global scientific communities. This paper reports a pilot study of the Center for Computational Research and Education (CCRE), a training initiative designed to introduce students and early-career researchers in Africa to computational research through a staged model of open recruitment, structured preparation, mentored project work, and reflective evaluation. The pilot was advertised through LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Instagram for more than two months, and 24 applicants registered. Twelve applicants were selected for a mandatory four-module Google Classroom preparatory course; six completed all required modules and advanced to the mentored group-project phase. Evaluation used pre- and post-program survey summaries from the final cohort. The pre-program survey had six responses, and the post-program survey had five responses. Baseline results showed strong motivation to build practical high-performance-computing skills, connect with a research-computing community, learn collaborative software practices, and explore computational approaches in participants’ domains. They also showed substantial structural barriers: most respondents reported no prior HPC access and no or limited formal training in HPC, parallel computing, or research computing. Post-program respondents gave an average overall rating of 4.20 out of 5, and all five indicated that they would definitely recommend the program. Respondents nevertheless continued to report barriers related to HPC access, local mentorship, and computing cost. The CCRE pilot is presented as an educational-practice model whose principal contribution is a documented and critically evaluated pathway for introducing computational research training under constrained infrastructure and mentorship conditions.</p>