Grand Challenges Africa
Spurring Science Innovation,
Translation and Entrepreneurship
in Africa
Science Innovation Pathways | Science Innovation, Translation and Entrepreneurship Programme | Grand Challenges Africa
WHAT WE DO
GC AFRICAThe Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) initiative seeks to promote Africa-led scientific innovations to help countries better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by awarding seed and scale-up grants to the continent’s most impressive solutions. GC Africa supports big, bold impactful innovative ideas that have a potential for impact, scale and sustainability.
The focus for Grand Challenges Africa is not new academic research but impactful robust solutions and products from scientific research. GC Africa builds on the previous successes of local Grand Challenges initiatives and a strong base of African Grand Challenges grantees.
Grand Challenges Africa is part of the Grand Challenges family of initiatives, which seeks to engage innovators from around the world to solve science, technology and innovation, health and developmental challenges. Grand Challenges initiatives are united by their focus on fostering innovation, directing research to where it will have the most impact, and serving those most in need. The first phase of the GC Africa, started in 2017, was implemented at the African Academy of Sciences with the support of funding partners.
"It's important to bring all good minds to address important problems and Grand Challenges Africa has enabled researchers create research communities which enable scientists in the same field to talk, collaborate and learn from each other" Iruka Okeke Prof. Ibadan University, Nigeria
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GC Africa
Drone Surveying Oilseed Crops to Help Farming Data
GC Africa's second phase is now managed and implemented by the Science for Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation).
The challenge also encourages partnerships that bring together investigators from diverse organizations, including for-profit institutions, non-governmental organisations, academic and health research institutions, foundations, and civil society groups. We believe that there is no unilateral access to ideas.
Today, a variety of funding partners use "Grand Challenges" to accelerate research, creating an expanding network of funding and research partnerships spanning diverse topics. The Grand Challenges family includes, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, United States Agency for International Development, Grand Challenges Brazil, Grand Challenges India, Grand Challenges South Africa, Grand Challenges Ethiopia, Grand Challenges Botswana and Grand Challenges Africa.
Our Program Approach:
- Identifying scientific priority areas: GC Africa brings together scientists, experts and stakeholders from different fields to map out priority areas that would need a concerted effort or solutions from African innovators.
- Sourcing innovation: Develop, launch and manage Africa-specific Grand Challenges targeted to address issues of health and development that are preventing African countries from reaching the SDGs. Since its inception, GC Africa has announced 15 funding rounds/calls for proposals including : Maternal Neonatal Child Health (MNCH) in Africa; 2. Data science approaches to improve MNCH in Africa; 3. Innovation for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in urban settings; 4. New approaches to characterize the global burden of antimicrobial resistance; 5. Drug discovery; 6. Innovative solutions to achieve food security and nutrition targets in Africa.; and 7. Transition To Scale (TTS) grants (l and 2)
- Providing follow-on funding: Support translation and scaling of promising Phase I grants, both from the existing portfolios and from new Phase I grants sponsored by Grand Challenges Africa. These promising ideas are funded through transition grants of up to $1 M scaling up innovations which have already received 5100,000 seed grants and that show promise of expansion and have applied for this additional scaling up funding.
- Expand the Grand Challenges Network: Support other African countries to launch national or regional Grand Challenges initiatives that fund innovators to pursue health and development solutions that further both national and global priorities and expand the funding base. Country specific initiatives are Grand Challenge South Africa, Grand Challenges Ethiopia and Grand Challenges Botswana.
- Build a cohort of scientists that work collaboratively to manage any ecosystem challenges that may arise during delivery of their projects. One of the projects towards this is GCAiN
Our Guiding Principles
- Strategic and well-articulated grand challenges serve both to focus research efforts and to capture the imagination and engage the world's best researchers.
- Opportunities for networking with: colleagues in the fellowship, partners, and strategic programmatic leads.
- Projects are selected based on open transparent calls for proposals seeking the best ideas.
- Funders, investors and other stakeholders actively collaborate to accelerate progress and integrate advances to ensure that these advances serve those most in need.
- Projects and investigators make global access commitments to ensure the fruits of their research are available to those most in need.
- Projects are selected not only for scientific excellence but also for the likelihood for them to achieve the desired impact and they are milestone-driven and actively managed to the end.
University of Cape Coast
Ghana
Innovative climate-smart agricultural practices and knowledge scaling-up in vulnerable regions of Benin (INNOCSAB).
The project team will investigate to what extend climate-smart agricultural practices and knowledge scaling-up can contribute to building resilience of agro-ecosystems and human systems in West Africa. Studies have shown that most smallholders who rely heavily on agriculture do not always have the knowledge, information and training needed to adopt agroecological measures and sustainable farming systems that support land management. The project will use an innovative approach of scaling the use of climate information through the Participatory and Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA), combining existing CSA technologies to adapt and mitigate climate change effects by training extension services, farmers, NGO, and researchers using Climate Smart Villages and Valleys (CSV) and Rural Resource Centers (RRC). We will then assess improvement of the profitability, productivity and sustainability of smallholder farming, household nutritional security and dietary diversity and income generation through integrated crop, tree, and livestock production systems.
The DnaJ-DnaK-GrpE Complex as a Selective Drug Target in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis
Rhodes University
South Africa
Stellenbosch University
South Africa
Optimizing Child Nutrition Investments for Increased Impact in High-Risk Populations in Kenya
Aga Khan University
Kenya
Scaling-up Uptake and Effective Use of Climate Resilient Innovations to Address Challenges Affecting Youth-led Agribusinesses in the Chicken Value Chain in Uganda and Burundi
Barbara Mugwanya Zawedde of the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) in Uganda and partners will facilitate increased uptake and effective use of climate resilient innovations to address challenges affecting youth-led agribusinesses in the chicken value chain in Uganda and Burundi. Youth have invested along the chicken value chain as a feasible source of income and employment, however, many are discouraged due to limited output resulting from use of technologies that are not adapted to the ever-changing climate. They will strengthen existing multi-stakeholder innovation platforms use them to identify, co-learn and reprioritize climate resilient innovations for the chicken value chain. They will use a Resilient Innovation Plan Model (RIPM) to optimize and recommend resilient options for different scenarios for the targeted agro-ecological zones. They will produce translated audio-visuals about the prioritized climate resilient innovations, and use digital solutions at Farmers Service Centers to disseminate the information to rural communities
Climate Adaptation and Resilience: Rural Communities and Agro-Food Industries along Kilombero River Floodplains Landscape, Tanzania
A Research team at Sokoine University of Agriculture see to generate spatial explicit social, ecological, climatic, and land tenure/cover landscape data for the purpose of developing climate risks and opportunity models. The study will come up with landscape climate risk and vulnerability information with potential to develop early warning indicators, and financial opportunities. They use scenario and spatial modeling approach to develop framework strategies to inform policy decisions at the local landscape scale. In the future will aim to expand to similar systems (small holder/industry farming systems, sugarcane farming and restoration of riparian zones in Eastern/Southern Africa to benefit sustainability of small scale agro-food industries, on farm production (soil retention, resilience to floods and other climate extremes) and biodiversity (microclimate, habitat, connectivity of habitat), taking advantages of technological advancement and unfolding financial resources.
Establishing Multi-Model Agricultural Data Science Hub (MM-ADSH)
Climate change, drought, floods are some of the major challenges that agriculture in Ethiopia goes through. Farmers have always had to cope with variables beyond their control, from the weather to the rate of vegetation. In recent years, however, the growth of data science technology has given farmers a new method to help them make sense of all the information they collect to track weather, predict demand changes, to optimize irrigation systems, to increase crop yields, reduce water usage, improve the quality of their products and etc..Dessalew Yohannes Bogale of Jimma University, Ethiopia will establish a Multi-Model Agricultural Data Science Hub (MM-ADSH) to accelerate the uptake of multi-modal agricultural data integration, facilitate knowledge creation and technology development that will enable data-driven solutions for climate adaptation. It is to increase capacities of researchers and innovators through training, and guidance with a particular focus on agricultural data utilization. Moreover, the project team will facilitate networking, engagement and collaboration between stakeholders.
An intelligent decision support for breeding future climate change resistant millet varieties in Senegal
Diariétou Sambakhe of the Regional Center of Excellence for dry cereals research (CERAAS) in Senegal will co-design an open-acces platform for knowledge sharing of annual ideotype maps of climate change resilient millet varieties in Senegal. The adaptation of crop varieties to their growing environment is the key factor supporting their performance. Regardless of genetic progress, the performance of major varieties still varies according to climatic conditions, crop management and pest pressure in the local environment. Knowledge of the interactions between variety traits, the environment and 'farmers' is needed to improve the performance of these varieties. They will redefine more precisely the millet growing areas in Senegal by considering the environmental conditions, crop management and pest pressure to predict their response to future climate conditions. They will identify better combinations of agro-morphological and genetic traits adapted to climate change. They will design an open access platform for knowledge sharing with stakeholders.
Identification of Plasmodium Falciparum Transmission Blocking Compounds
Université des Sciences, des Techniques et des Technologies de Bamako (USTTB)
South Africa
Targeting Protein Kinases for the Development of Novel Drugs for Trematode Infections
Technical University of Kenya
Kenya
Research and Development of a Non-Hormonal Natural Product Based Female Contraceptive
Elizabeth V. M. Kigondu of the Center for Traditional Medicine & Drug Research (CTMDR), Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) is going to be exploring extracts and compounds from plants used traditionally in Kenya and reported to have a contraceptive effect, for further development of a non-hormonal natural product based female contraceptive. In some parts of Kenya, some communities use seeds or other plant parts as antifertility agents and some of these plants have been proven scientifically to have an antifertility effect in various animal models. In a small study carried out by Elizabeth’s team at KEMRI, they were able to demonstrate that one of our indigenous plants has an antifertility effect in mice. This study has formed the basis of the current project recently funded by the Gates Foundation, through the Science for Africa Foundation, where they plan to investigate the plant further, in addition to other selected plants, to establish the safety, the mechanism of action and identify the active components in the active extracts.
Countering Anti-Microbial Resistance Through Chemical Manipulation of the Pathogen-Host Interaction
Stellenbosch University
South Africa
Université de Yaoundé 1
Cameroon
Identification of Novel Inhibitors Against Malarial and Trypanosomal Hsp90
North West University
South Africa
Anti-Adhesins with Therapeutic Potential for Enteroaggregative Escherichia Coli Diarrhoea
University of Ibadan, Ibadan
Nigeria
Makerere University College of Health Sciences, School of Public Health
Uganda
Kwadwo Danso-Mensah and the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED)
aim to investigate the critical role of climate change adaptation inventions in mitigating climate change impacts on Africa's agricultural sector.
They intend providing a comprehensive overview of existing studies and evidence on the theme to enable policy makers and researchers to make evidence-based decisions regarding climate change adaptation strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. They will produce an Evidence and Gap Map (EGM) by systematically searching for and categorizing studies from diverse sources of published and unpublished studies across regions, thematic areas, and outcomes that related to climate change adaptation. Studies meeting the eligibility criteria defined by a predetermined Population, Interventions, Comparisons, Outcomes, and Study design (PICOS) framework will be included in the EGM. Findings of this EGM will be crucial for resource optimisation and strategic planning for policy makers and practitioners in the realm of agricultural relevant climate adaptation in Africa
Université des Sciences, des Techniques et des Technologies de Bamako (USTTB)
Mali
Development of Targeted Transmission-Blocking Agents Against Malaria
University of Pretoria
South Africa
The cervical mucus barrier as a target for artificial neural network inspired novel blends of electrospun scaffolds.
Margaret Ilomuanya of the University of Lagos in Nigeria will develop a non-hormonal approach to contraception in women focussing on the interaction of mucoadhesive electrospun scaffold with cervical mucus. Studies have shown that unintended pregnancies occur due to perceived dissatisfaction, or unpalatable side effect profiles, arising frommodern hormonal contraceptive use. This has necessitated a need for more effective optionsin non-hormonal contraception to be made available to women. They will develop a novel blend of biodegradable electrospun scaffolds whose properties will be optimized using artificial neural networks aided surface response aided design to facilitate non-hormonal contraception via interaction with cervical mucus. They will evaluate the surface characteristics, mucoadhesive nature and safety of the developed scaffolds to demonstrate the potential of the developed electrospun scaffolds as a delivery platform for contraception.
Characterization of herbal bioactive for the development of spermicides for female contraception
The use of fertility-regulating plants as method of contraception continue to play a significant role in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies despite the popularity of modern contraceptives. Mutiat Bolanle Ibrahim of the University of Lagos, Nigeria and her team will identify and characterize the non-hormonal contraceptive activity of selected fertility-regulating plant extracts for the development into vaginal herbal contraceptive products with no irritations to the vagina and cervical mucosa. The team will screen crude plant extracts for sperm immobilization and sperm migration inhibition activity. They will carry out sperm function tests on plant extracts and evaluate the vaginal contraceptive activity of the extracts in female rabbits. The team willinvestigate the safety of contraceptive plant extract on cervical and vaginal mucosa epithelia via in vitro and in vivo models. They will identify the chemical constituents of the vaginal contraceptive plant extract that elicits the non-hormonal contraceptive effect.
Naeemah Abrahams
South African Medical Research Council
South Africa
University of Ghana (UG)
Uganda
Enhancing Local Level Climate Adaptation Systems in Musanze District, Rwanda
GanzAfrica takes a systems level intervention to strengthen local adaptation capacities through a bottom-up, locally driven, multi-sectoral and youth centered approach. Climate adaptation initiatives in many countries are largely top-down, where decisions are made at central level due to limited local capacity of local actors. We deploy young adaptation champions in local departments of agriculture, land, and environment, to facilitate and coordinate adaptation initiatives. They will consult stakeholders and gather local perspectives, create inventories of data and evidence including documenting local knowledge and practices, setting up a demo plot to showcase adaptation practices, develop stakeholder collaboration and coordination frameworks, train local champions, set up community climate information, and community peer-learning systems. In the process, we create a platform for communities, sectors, and partners to collaborate, co-learn, co-create, test and co-implement evidence informed, context specific adaptation measures. Lessons drawn are harnessed to scale adaptation approaches and inform national policy.
Diversifying Gambian diets for health and Environmental Sustainability (DiGES)
Zakari Ali of the Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at LSHTM in The Gambia will identify and promote the consumption and production of underutilized crops that are more resilient to climate change, reduce environmental impacts, and have positive health attributes. Studies have investigated different ways to produce enough food under climate change – with diverse evidence of success. This project will examine how populations can demand and consume foods that are more climate resilient. The project uses population diet as the entry point to agricultural adaption to climate change by identifying the barriers and opportunities for populations to demand and consume locally available and climate resilient foods. They will model different food system scenarios under climate change – engage food system stakeholders, policymakers and local farmers, and use social behaviour change communication (SBCC) strategies to promote the demand, consumption, and production of climate resilient crops.