Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, July 13-16, 2015
Introduction
The
Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) is a joint
initiative of the African Academy of Sciences and the New Partnership for
Africa’s Development (NEPAD). This initiative is also established in
partnership with three major funders, namely, the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation (BMGF), the Wellcome trust t and the UK Department for International
Development (DFID).
AESA
is a funding, strategy and think tank platform that will support research in
Africa. The initial focus of the platform is in health sciences, although
with time, other areas of priority concern, such as Food and Nutrition,
Agriculture, Energy, etc. will be addressed. This project is funded by the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges team. Grand
Challenges is a family of grant programs fostering innovation to solve key
global health and development problems for those most in need. Grand Challenges
partners, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, USAID’s
Grand Challenges for Development, Grand Challenges Brazil, and Grand Challenges
India are all guided by the following set of 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.
- Projects are selected based on public, transparent calls for proposals seeking the best ideas.
- Funders, investigators, and other stakeholders actively collaborate to accelerate progress and integrate advances to ensure these advances serve those most in need.
- Projects are selected not only for scientific excellence, but also for their likelihood to achieve the desired impact, and they are milestone driven and actively managed to that end
- Projects and investigators make global access commitments to ensure the fruits of their research are available to those most in need.
To
date the Grand Challenges partners have collectively made over 1600 grants in
80 countries. The Gates Foundation is interested in continuing to
increase the quality of good applications that comes into it’s Grand Challenges
pipeline of ideas.
To
this end, the AAS is planning to organize two proposal development workshop in
2015, the first of these workshops will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in
July 2015, in collaboration with the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences (EAS).
Background
and Rationale
One
notable limitation to research output in Africa is the low quality of proposals
submitted by early and mid-career scientists from African research centers and
universities. Few of these end up attracting funding with a success rate of
less than 20%. The majority get dismissed, not because they are lacking in
scientific relevance but because they fail to meet required standards set by
the granting organizations in terms of rationale, approach, resources
requested, or they simply fail to convince the reviewers. Thus the major aim of
these workshops are to impart knowledge on key principles of writing grant
winning proposals and thereby improve the quality of proposals.
Specifically,
participants will also be inducted on the principles, requirements and formats
of various applications, including Grand Challenges applications.
Additional communication skill training will be given with the goal of
equipping applicants with compelling story telling skills. Trainers and
facilitators chosen from among AAS and EAS Fellows, BMGF staff and other
experts will serve as resource persons for these workshops. The workshop
intends to attract and encourage the best minds in Africa who are working in
areas of public health and development. It is hoped workshops and other
measures will make substantial contributions to improve the quality of
applications coming from African institutions.
Objectives and expected outcomes
The
workshop’s aim is to:
· Train
a new cadre of African Scientists on proposal development techniques and
prepare them to respond to any competitive Request for Proposals globally
· Boost
capacity of African scientists in competing for research grants
· Raise
research quality and output in Africa
Methodology
and target group
Participation
to the workshop will be selected from across the continent based on
qualifications, experience, research interests and support from home
institution. Scientists who are newly qualified as PhDs, are working as
post-doctoral scientists, or are in mid-career (less than 5 years since PhD
qualification) are particularly encouraged to apply The scope of the workshops
will focus on compelling story telling; walking through the grant making
process; tips and tricks from mentors; grant management and project
implementation. This will be delivered over three days in the form of plenary,
interactive and parallel breakout sessions.
Applications:
Applications
are invited from interested scientists who may benefit from participation in
this workshop. Applicants are required to fill the attached form and send
to:
African
Academy of Sciences, Email: workshop@aasciences.org; Tel: +254 725 290 145.
Deadline
for Application is 20 April 2015 at 5pm East Africa Time
Please
visit the link below for more details:
