Launching the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Call for Proposals

The African Academy of Sciences and the NEPAD Agency’s Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) is happy to announce the launch of the call for proposals for the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa), a major genomic research programme.
 
The call is being launched with the support of the Wellcome Trust and the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Africa NCD Open Lab Initiative.
 
The deadline for applications is 24 March 2017.
 
The first phase of H3Africa, a major genomics research programme created by the US’ National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Wellcome Trust ended in 2016.

Wellcome has made a £9m grant to AESA to run its component of the second phase of the programme while the NIH will continue to manage its awards. AESA will manage the H3Africa consortium in partnership with the Wellcome Trust and the NIH.

GSK has also entered into a collaboration with AESA to provide additional funding for the call.
 
Taking the lead on the funding and management of these awards represents an important milestone for AAS-AESA and furthers the momentum we are building for an Africa-led science and research agenda.
 
We will provide up to £2.5 million to each successful collaborative projects with lead institutions based in Africa to research on the use of genomics and cutting edge approaches to determine environmental factors contributing to health diseases of importance to Africa.
Proposals must be aligned to the H3Africa remit, which covers four main objectives:
 

• To support human genomics and genetics research that will not only generate important findings and discoveries relevant to human health, but will also serve as a vehicle to improve the research capacity of African laboratories and provide research opportunities for young scientists at the institutions where the research is carried out. 
• To expand expertise and experience in genomics-based biomedical research and environmental epidemiology in Africa through research excellence, skills development and mentoring of the next generation of genomics researchers and enhanced collaborations with regional, national, and international partners. 
• To improve infrastructure including bioinformatics and biorepository capacity needed to support genomics-based and environmental research and associated data and sample sharing. 
• To cultivate a culture of community engagement within research projects across the consortium. Community engagement can include a variety of activities, such as broad consent for sharing of samples and data, recontact of research participants, return of results to individual participants, or other relevant topics.

 
For full details on this funding opportunity announcement, and information on how to apply please visit: http://aasciences.ac.ke/aesa/programmes/h3africa/funding-opportunities/