African initiative launched to strengthen health research
25 February 2009
The two organisations, based in Kenya and Malawi, will implement nationally owned strategies aimed at strengthening health research capacity in their respective countries.
In Kenya, grant giving will be implemented by a new nongovernmental organisation, the Consortium for National Health Research; in Malawi, activities will be undertaken within the existing National Research Council of Malawi.
Funding for the two organisations comes from the Wellcome Trust and the Department for International Development (DFID) in the UK, and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada. The three international funders have spent the past two years working with local stakeholders to develop the necessary grant making, legal and financial frameworks required to manage their awards.
The two new grant-giving bodies will receive £10 million each over five years to make awards according to their national research and training priorities. Their aim is to strengthen the capacity of key academic research and health policy-making institutions to generate new scientific knowledge within Kenya and Malawi, and improve its use in evidence-based decision making, policy formulation and implementation.
"Countries need to be able to develop and implement their own research strategies, meeting their own priorities," says Dr Jimmy Whitworth, Head of International Activities at the Wellcome Trust. "Through the Health Research Capacity Strengthening initiative, we aim to build the capacity of these African countries to make their own grants according to their own needs."
The HRCS initiative aims to enhance institutional capacity for high quality, multidisciplinary health-related research and lead to the development of national health policies and programmes formulated utilising research findings. New networks and research collaborations of this sort will enable scientific knowledge to be shared more effectively throughout Africa and across international organisations.
Graham Teskey, Head of DFID Research, said: "DFID's focus is to ensure that research makes a much greater impact on policy and practice in our partner countries. It is our hope that the training fellowships, research grants, institutional grants and other forms of support, which will be provided by this initiative, will help counter the brain drain and attract young bright African scientists and researchers back to Africa to undertake high quality research."
"The support for these initiatives in both Kenya and Malawi has been remarkable," adds Dr Christina Zarowsky, who leads IDRC's programmes related to research on health policy and health equity. "Working across disciplines and across institutions is not easy, but is increasingly seen as crucial to solving the health and development challenges Africans face."
The initiative is the first time that international funders such as the Wellcome Trust and DFID have worked together in this way, to establish funding schemes planned and developed locally. Other African countries, such as Zambia, have expressed interest in developing a similar scheme in their own countries.
"As funders, we are keen to learn from this experience and to ensure this knowledge is available for others to share," says Dr Whitworth. "We anticipate that, if successful, through the HRCS initiative, we can change the way donors and funders work together and are better aligned with national priorities."
Image credit: Mark Jones
Contact
Craig Brierley
Senior Media Officer
Wellcome Trust
T +44 (0)20 7611 7329
E
c.brierley@wellcome.ac.uk
Notes for editors
1. Health Research Capacity Strengthening initiative
2. The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.
3. DFID, the Department for International Development, is leading the British Government's fight against world poverty. DFID works in partnership with governments, civil society, the private sector and others. It also works with multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, United Nations agencies and the European Commission. DFID works directly in over 150 countries worldwide, with a budget of £5.3 billion in 2007/08.
4. Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is one of the world's leading institutions in the generation and application of new knowledge to meet the challenges of international development. For nearly 40 years, IDRC has worked in close collaboration with researchers from the developing world to build healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous societies.