Deadline: 07-Jul-2020
The African Academy of Sciences (AAS), through its Grand Challenges Africa programme seeks to form interlinkages within the continent to develop drug discovery teams with successful innovative projects and give an opportunity to connect to mentors and drug discovery networks outside the continent.
The AAS implements GC Africa in partnership with the NEPAD Agency, now the African Union Development Agency and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) This call is a joint initiative of GC Africa partners including BMGF, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and the University of Cape Town (UCT) Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D).
Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) is a scheme of the Africa Academy of Sciences (AAS) initiated to support innovations that address Africa’s health and developmental challenges. The scheme seeks to promote Africa-led scientific innovations to help countries better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by awarding seed and full grants to the continent’s most impressive solutions.
Funding Information
- This call will fund seed grants at up to USD $100,000 for a period of 2 years. They expect that projects funded with promising results will have the opportunity to apply for additional funding to build on initial success. In all cases, individual project budgets should be representative of the scope and magnitude of the proposed mandate and
- carefully designed to get the best possible value out of the award.
Key features of the GC Africa initiative are:
- A short application form to lower the burden of entry
- Rapid turnaround time: They select projects within approximately six months of the proposal submission.
- Blinded review process: Proposals are sent to reviewers without an applicant’s identifying/personal or organizational information, so proposals are evaluated based on the merit of the idea and not the applicants resume
Eligibility Criteria
The call is open to African innovators working in African based, domestic organizations, including non-profit and not for profit making organizations, international organizations, government agencies, research and academic institutions.
Evaluation Criteria
Successful proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
- Scientific and technical excellence, including a clear and rigorous conceptual framework for research activities
- Innovation, including creativity of the project’s approach and clear differentiation from existing approaches
- Unique project resources, including investigator and organization capabilities and potential to enhance intra – African collaborations, mentorship and supervision in future.
- Value in terms of appropriateness of the budget and timelines relative to project complexity, risk, and potential impact.
- Potential to lead to prevention and treatment solutions with substantial impact.
For more information, visit https://www.aasciences.africa/calls/grand-challenges-africa-round-10-2nd-drug-discovery-call