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 programmes that fund innovators to pursue health and development solutions that further both national and global priorities and expand the funding base. Country specific programmes 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