22 February 2023 - NAIROBI, KENYA — The Science for Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation), Wellcome and UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) through the East Africa Research and Innovation Hub, are boosting their partnership and engagement showing their commitment to strengthening Africa’s research ecosystem.

Human, financial and technical resources are required to address health issues, such as the threat to health posed by climate change, as well as emerging regional and global disease outbreaks including Ebola, Covid-19 and Mpox.

As 2022 came to an end, Wellcome signed an agreement with FCDO to provide more than £6.5Million to the SFA Foundation extending their funding partnership announced in July 2022. The latest award will enable the SFA Foundation to provide science funding to Africa’s leading senior researchers.

The SFA Foundation mobilises and funds the best research and innovation in Africa by identifying Research & Development (R&D) areas aligned to Africa's developmental goals, designing innovative research programmes around them, and selecting outstanding research teams to deliver timely, quality results as envisioned jointly with African and global partners. By securing broad funding support from global funders and partners, the SFA Foundation ensures that science and innovation are used as tools to tackle major societal challenges, boosting better health, wellbeing, livelihoods and economic prosperity in Africa.

“Wellcome is committed to funding ambitious and creative research across Africa that takes on some of the most pressing health challenges facing our world. We are very pleased to be working with the SFA Foundation and partners to support high-quality, world-leading research across Africa, developing the continent’s growing research and development sector,” says Dr Branwen Hennig, International Programs Adviser, Wellcome.

“In addition to funding research, support from Wellcome and the UK government is directed towards the development of global standards for grant due diligence, research management, open access to science and enabling public participation in research. These components are an essential part of strengthening the wider research ecosystem to enable partner countries to deliver sustainable economic growth in line with national and UK priorities,” says Dr Jordan Kyongo, Research & Innovation Adviser, British High Commission, Nairobi.

"Through the support we give to science in Africa, our aim is to positively impact lives not only on the continent but globally as well. Such partnerships, as the one with Wellcome and FCDO, helps us to advance this aim and to continue supporting knowledge generation required to lessen the impact of challenges facing this continent, health and climate being one of them,” says Dr Tom Kariuki, Executive Director, SFA Foundation.

The SFA Foundation will collaborate with scientific leaders and institutions across the continent to support, strengthen and promote cutting-edge research and innovation and will work closely with African governments to put science and innovation at the centre of policy and practice.

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Contact: Deborah-Fay Ndlovu |  [email protected]