Funding Call Details

Deadline: Friday, December 4, 2020

Call Release date: October 27, 2020

Call submission deadline: December 4, 2020 at 23:59hrs East African Time

The Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA), created through a partnership between the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) in partnership with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) welcome proposals to address a new Grand Challenge: Promoting and facilitating innovative solutions to achieve Food Security and Nutrition in Africa. These grand challenge innovation grants will be issued and administered under Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa), a programme implemented in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This challenge focuses on key targets of the Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. SDG2 is interconnected with and interdependent on several other SDGs that strongly relate to food security and nutrition including: SDG1 (poverty), SDG3 (health), SDG4 (education), SDG5 (gender equality), SDG6 (water and sanitation), SDG13 (climate), SDG14 (life below water) and SDG15 (life on land). This call aims to stimulate new approaches, interventions, tools and novel combinations of existing approaches to ensure that Africa progresses rapidly to improve sustainable and equitable access to nutrient dense foods that promote good health. The challenge will pay attention to five key research priority areas as ranked by leading experts working in Food Security and Nutrition on the African continent deemed critical to address the existing gaps.

Funding for this call

GC Africa will fund African Investigators through this GC Africa Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) call. We are seeking innovative global development and health solutions related to achieving food security and nutrition and are now accepting proposals for applications. Subject to the eligibility requirements in the GC Africa Rules & Guidelines, investigators are invited to apply, with the support of the primary organisation where they are affiliated, and where the major programme of work will be undertaken. Applications MUST be submitted through the AAS Ishango Online Application Portal. Grants will go to investigators in African countries, but we encourage partnerships with investigators in other countries, especially where the opportunity exists to build new or strengthen existing collaborations.

Applicants can be at any level of experience and working in any discipline, from any organization, including colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, for profit and non-profit organizations.

Funding amount

The Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) awards will fund projects up to USD $100,000 for a maximum of 2 years. These awards are seed grants (phase I) meant to provide an opportunity to test particularly bold, proof of concept ideas, including applying approaches from outside the fields indicated for this call. New approaches could be piloted as additions to ongoing projects. Winners of the GC Africa-FSN grants will have an opportunity to apply for follow-on, transition to scale funding in future but please note that support for phase II funding is NOT part of this call.

Future phase II calls – Funded at up to USD 1 million per three-year project, phase II awards require substantial preliminary data (to be collected during phase I) and are meant to provide an opportunity to develop, refine, and rigorously test combinations of activities, including sets of interventions for which some or all have previously shown promise in controlled or limited settings. We expect that successful projects funded under this call, and which demonstrate promising results, will have the opportunity to apply for phase II funding either to GC Africa or directly to our partners.

In all cases, individual project budgets should be representative of the scope and magnitude of the proposed studies and carefully designed to get the best possible value out of the award. The applicant recipient institution, organization or company will also be required to provide assurances on their capacity to manage the grant through detailed letters of support from the appropriate research or innovation support office. The AAS reserves the right to undertake due diligence site visits to organizations hosting successful candidates before making final awards.

More information may be found here.