Grand Challenges Senegal 2023 developing Africa’s ecosystem for public health innovation ($50,000 Grant)

Deadline: January 31st, 2023

A non-profit innovation fund called Grand Challenges Senegal housed at the Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) foundation. Grand Challenges Senegal aims to develop Africa’s ecosystem for public health innovation. Grand Challenges Senegal will use grant money to test novel concepts developed by local innovators and diaspora-based African scientists.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and ELMA Philanthropies provided the initial funding for the establishment of Grand Challenges Senegal, which was established by the government of Senegal in October 2022 with the goal of enabling the subsequent wave of discoveries and translational life science breakthroughs in West Africa.

Senegal is making tremendous progress with its plan to produce vaccines and diagnostics as the first line of defense against epidemics, and the ecosystem it creates after COVID offers an unmatched chance to simultaneously improve its research and development (R&D) environment.

Grand Challenges initiatives are united by their focus on fostering innovation, directing research to where it will have the most impact, and serving those most in need. Grand Challenges Senegal will be no different and prioritize innovators that a) integrate across disciplines and converge solutions, b) prioritize Senegal as a setting to exemplify the work but with regional impact and potential for reach, and c) apply the very latest science into an ecosystem that is evolving into a hub for translational impact and production. 

Scope

Grand Challenges Senegal established to:

• Advance life science innovation and public health in Africa
• Elevate the work and profile of Senegalese and African innovators in Africa and innovators among the diaspora across the globe.  
• Deploy the Grand Challenges funding model in Africa, with a particular focus on the ECOWAS region
• Support the innovation pipeline from discovery to development to deployment 
• Support existing grantees of Grand Challenges initiatives in Africa, particularly those supported by Grand Challenges Africa, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and Grand Challenges for Development USAID. 

Benefits

• Up to 8 proposals supported with a grant of $50,000 over a period of 18 months.
• On completion, successful projects eligible for assistance with additional resource mobilization, project planning and grant monitoring. 

Eligibility

• Successful proposals address one or more of the program areas defined above
• Must be based in Senegal.
• Projects with a component in Senegal and another African country will be considered eligible.
• projects led by African scientists in the diaspora in partnership with an institution in Senegal also considered eligible.

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