Regional Facilities for Women in Science: the Experience of X-TechLab in Benin

West Africa counts 16 countries, including Benin, and nearly 400 000 000 people which includes almost 50% of females. However, West Africa is a region which suffers from a poor quality of education, a severe deficit of skilled labor, engineers, and scientists. More than half of the world's out-of-school children are living in Sub-Saharan Africa (African Development Bank Group, 2020) and especially girls and women are excluded from science education. According to the UNESCO 2021 Science report, the share of women researchers in selected West African countries in 2017 or closest year, are respectively 11,2% in Togo, 15,1% in Mali, 17% in Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire, and 29,3% in Senegal. These statistics show that less than 1/3 of researchers in west African countries in scientific fields are females. To attract girls and promote women in science, African countries must make massive investments in research and innovation, accelerate infrastructure development that will reduce their dependence on foreign technologies and increase the capacity-building in research and innovation. This is where some regional scientific facilities such as X-TechLab are a valuable contribution to the overall solution. X-TechLab is a regional training platform established within "Agence de Développement de Sèmè City", one of Benin Government's flagship projects which aims to create a world-class knowledge and innovation center in Africa. The main mission of X-TechLab is to endow the local and regional scientific communities with technical skills that will allow them to use X-ray techniques as tools for solving various problems in their specific fields. During this talk, we will present the main achievements of X-TechLab since its creation in 2019 and how this platform works as a driving force to contribute to breaking gender barriers in science in West Africa.