The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation at the 17th Grand Challenges Annual Meeting, has announced an initial commitment of $50 million to support science and innovation in low- and middle-income countries. The Grand Challenges Global Call to Action is a 10-year initiative that will prioritize grants to scientists from low- and middle-income countries and support a balanced representation of women principal investigators. Researchers in Africa can now submit their proposals before the respective deadlines in early 2022. The calls are as below.
The Building Malaria Modeling Capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa is a Request For Proposal (RFP) that seeks innovative approaches to building a stronger malaria mathematical modeling ecosystem in sub-Saharan Africa one of the goals being Increasing the number of Ph.D.-trained mathematical modelers with malaria expertise based at sub-Saharan African institutions. The funding level is up to USD $1,000,000 per year for each project.
The Digital Health Services for Pregnant Women to Support Antenatal Risk Stratification in Sub-Saharan Africa RFP will consider proposals for services that can support and contribute to the Foundations mission Antenatal Risk Stratification vision (ARS) via digital applications. The funding level is up to USD $500,000 for each project, with a grant term of 6 to 24 months depending on the scope of the project.
The Metagenomics Next Generation Sequencing to Detect, Identify, and Characterize Pathogens RFP serves as a model for a process that would eventually lead to a network of pathogen detection nodes that could provide increased global transparency into regional pathogen distribution in an accurate and timely manner, and in ultimate support of a global pathogen surveillance network. Funding level is up to USD $200,000 for each project, with a grant term of up to 24 months depending on the scope of the project.
The Innovations in Eliminating Neglected Tropical Diseases RFP include integrated mapping of methods to better target existing interventions and strategies for post-elimination surveillance, including cross-border surveillance. The Funding level is up to USD $200,000 for each project, with a grant term of up to 18 months depending on the scope of the project.
The Foundation’s mission is to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life. The Grand Challenges is a family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve key global health and development problems.
Photo courtesy / Gates Foundation
Article by Virginia Wanjiru
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