The African Academy of Sciences (The AAS), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, (BMBF)) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announce a transformative partnership to support African investigators to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for health.
The announcement was made in Berlin, Germany at the 2018 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting that aims to builds momentum for global health and development innovation and foster scientific collaboration among international groups and researchers.
“The partnership with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research represents another giant and solid step to catalyse breakthroughs from African innovators who understand best the local problems and can deliver home grown solutions for developmental and health challenges,” said Felix Dakora, The AAS’ President.
The AAS will implement the partnership through its Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) programme that promotes Africa-led innovations to help countries better achieve the SDGs by awarding seed and scale-up grants to the continent’s most impressive solutions.
GC Africa is one of over 10 AAS programmes being implemented through the funding and agenda setting platform, the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) an initiative of The AAS and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA formerly the NEPAD Agency) supported by Wellcome, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and DFID.
Successful innovations have significantly contributed to improving the health, lives and productivity of African citizens and transforming the societies they live in.
Several impressive innovations funded by The AAS are tackling maternal, neonatal and child health while simple innovations, such as school feeding programmes and provision of sanitary towels in Kenya and Uganda are keeping girls in schools and transforming societies.
The Gates Foundation President, Trevor Mundel said, “The Gates Foundation believes that African research scientists must be in the lead in developing the new tools required to tackle Africa’s greatest health challenges. We’re excited about this new partnership and its potential to deliver on that promise.”
