Funding Science in Africa: Knowledge, Global Challenges, and Initiatives for Health Research

How to best stimulate, foster and sustain science environments in Africa has become crucial for both research funding organizations and individual researchers across all disciplines. Public and private funders have experimented with new formats to enhance research capacities of African scientists, ranging from individual fellowships over institutional capacity-building and new collaborative programs to policy dialogues. Numerous global challenges and policy agendas such as the sustainable development goals underline the urgency of these efforts.

In his lecture, Tumani Corrah presents the approach of the newly founded African Research Excellence Fund for the strengthening of health research capacities in Africa. He starts from the observation that the support of African researchers is the best way to strengthen their contributions to their home countries due to their acquired medical expertise, their linguistic knowledge and their profound understanding of the local contexts. What are the challenges ahead and how to best cope with them?

Tumani Corrah is the Director of Africa Research Excellence Fund (founded by the UK Medical Research Foundation) and the first Emeritus Director of the Medical Research Council Unit (MRC), the Gambia. He has 19 years of active research experience on tropical and infectious diseases. Tumani Corrah is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and is a member of over 20 scientific board and committee groups worldwide.

The lecture is organized by Stefan Skupien, research fellow of the president's project group. He manages a research project that compares science-funding strategies of West European countries for African-European research cooperations.