The Science for Africa Foundation based in Kenya, has announced two new funding programmes targeting innovators anywhere on the continent. One programme is for climate adaptation projects; the other to develop non-hormonal contraceptives.
The funding provided by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will run over a period of two years through the SFA Foundation’s Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) programme.
Early this year, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the African Union (AU) estimated that 346 million people in Africa are affected by a food crisis with crop production between 58-70%, which is below average across the region. To respond to this challenge, the Science for Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation) welcomes innovative projects proposing ways to adapt agricultural production to climate change in a bid to sustain productivity and promote food security.
The climate change adaptation funding will support projects that aim to improve food security across sub-Saharan Africa. It will provide seed funding of US$100,000 to projects that are looking to prove their concept, while projects taking such concepts to scale will be awarded US$200,000.
Almost half of the pregnancies in low- and middle-income communities, 111 million annually, are unintended with over 75% occurring among women who seek to avoid pregnancy but fail to do so due to lack of access to modern contraceptive options.
The contraceptives research and development funding aims to provide up to $350,000 to multidisciplinary consortia consisting of 2-3 researchers preferably based in the same institution to develop novel non-hormonal contraceptives that are safe, effective, easy-to-access, discreet, convenient, do not contain sex steroid hormones or rely on hormonal mechanisms and do not disrupt menstrual patterns.
Additionally, the funding seeks to expand the capacity for scientists and institutions to conduct contraceptive R&D and to build and strengthen the contraceptive R&D network on the African continent by encouraging intra-institutional and intra-Africa collaborations.
The Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) is a programme of the SFA Foundation that manages and supports the creation of extraordinary innovations that address health and developmental challenges in Africa. The programme awards seed and scale up grants to the continent’s most impressive solutions .
Photo courtesy / Google
Article by Jedidah Mwangi
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