The Alliance to Accelerate Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA), created through a partnership between the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) in partnership with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), is accepting proposals to address a new Grand Challenge: Promoting and facilitating innovative solutions to achieve Food Security and Nutrition in Africa.
Application deadline: December 4thof 2020 at 23:59hrs East Africa Time
About the Award: GC Africa will fund African researchers through this GC Africa Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) call. We are seeking innovative global development and health solutions related to achieving food security and nutrition and are now accepting application proposals. Subject to the eligibility requirements in the GC Africa Rules and Guidelines, researchers are invited to apply, with the support of the primary organization to which they are affiliated and where the major work programme will be carried out. Grants will be for researchers in African countries, but we encourage partnerships with researchers from other countries, especially where there is an opportunity to build new or strengthen existing collaborations.
Candidates may be at any experience level and work in any discipline, from any organization, including colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, and non-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Type: Grant
Eligibility: Projects that will apply and enable the adoption of new technologies, innovations and policies in at least one of the following key areas for:
- Ensuring climate-resilient food systems
- Promoting technologies, innovations, and agribusiness to achieve food security and nutrition goals.
- Addressing cross-cutting issues that promote food security and nutrition.
- Achieving the African Union's nutritional and health goals
- Combating the sustainable marketing and production of indigenous foods
Projects should aim to develop innovations or interventions that address at least one aspect of food security and nutrition (access, availability, utilization, and sustainability) or provide new evidence-based ways to strengthen and promote the effectiveness of these aspects for existing solutions. Such solutions may include, but are not limited to, models, strategies, tools, services, technologies, and processes. We seek ideal solutions that apply a fund
Understanding the end user and considering the contextual constraints of the implementation.
Projects must be relevant to strengthening food security and nutrition systems and can target key actors such as individuals, families, communities, farmers, service providers and components of food infrastructure, networks and systems.
Examples of what we will consider funding innovations include:
- Highlight and increase interventions that increase the resilience of agri-food systems to climate shocks (drought, pests, floods or pandemics such as COVID-19 etc).
- To provide affordable and acceptable options for scaling up climate-smart agricultural practices, for example, reducing emissions from agriculture, preventing biodiversity loss, avoiding soil degradation and soil nutrient depletion, etc.
- Investigating agricultural practices that can reverse the negative impacts of intensive agriculture and, at the same time, combat acute and chronic food insecurity.
- Develop measures for access to dense and affordable food by low-income communities to address multiple burdens of malnutrition (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity) while mitigating the negative impacts of the food transition.
- Targets for activities that mitigate specific community constraints to improve the nutritional status of specific groups – infants, children, adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, the elderly, sick or convalescent individuals, etc.
- Research into the potential of indigenous food systems to prevent the wave of non-communicable diseases, micronutrient deficiencies, wasting, malnutrition, obesity and overweight in Africa.
- Prioritise policies that promote access and affordability of nutritious food for vulnerable groups.
- To promote the use of agriculture, food and nutrition as a factor in socio-economic development; equity and inclusion; stability, and to guarantee peace and security.
- Develop structures that promote advances in agri-food systems, home-grown solutions to food insecurity, training facilities for new generations of actors in agri-food systems, e.g. young farmers, traders, innovators, researchers, etc.
- Identify strategies to improve productivity in indigenous agri-food systems, including indigenous crops and livestock.
- Identify the support needed to develop the seed production sector for nutrient-dense foods such as fruit and vegetables, as well as underutilised and indigenous foods, including livestock.
- Researching market value chains for indigenous foods, their safety and efficacy testing, including marketing and consumer perceptions.
- Build diversified and sustainable food systems that promote nutrient-dense eating patterns (e.g. fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, insects, etc.) and downgrade patterns of highly processed, energy-dense and low-nutrient foods.
- Promoting technologies/innovations that minimise pre-harvest and post-harvest losses and/or general food waste through consumption patterns, such as food storage, recycling technologies, dietary patterns, etc.
- Promoting innovations that reduce food contamination, e.g. aflatoxins and other sources of food-borne illness.
- Promote sustainable livestock farming practices that can reduce infections and dependence on antibiotics.
Selection criteria: The criteria for success will include solutions that:
- It could contribute to a portfolio of funded projects that address a country's main regional priorities or challenges.
- Clearly incorporate reasonable measures of success for the lifetime of the concession (24 months).
- Incorporate multiple areas of innovation or expand intervention toolkits, especially sets of interventions aimed at combinations of results that cover the spectrum of objectives outlined for this call.
- Have a project plan whereby, after two years, the end of phase I, the beneficiaries will be in a position to explore how the results of their project could inform the design of a more extensive collaborative package of work that can be submitted for phase II funding.
- Address well-identified barriers and restrictions that will be resolved through the implementation of locally relevant programmes.
- Explain how the proposed innovations and interventions will eventually be tested in communities so that they have the greatest chance of being relevant for wider implementation in the country's systems.
- Provide data or evidence for effective food security and nutrition solutions.
- Addressing inequities in food security and nutrition.
- It can potentially build on existing partnerships, which will be essential for achieving results at scale.
Eligible countries: African countries
Number of awards: Not specified
Premium amount: Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) awards They will finance projects of up to US$100,000 for a maximum period of 2 years.These awards are seed grants (Phase I) intended to provide an opportunity to test particularly bold and conceptual ideas, including the application of approaches from outside the fields indicated for this call. New approaches could be piloted as additions to ongoing projects. Winners of the GC Africa-FSN grants will have the opportunity to apply for follow-on funding, transitioning to larger-scale funding in the future, but please note that support for Phase II funding is NOT part of this call.
Future Phase II Calls – Funded up to USD 1 million per three-year project, Phase II awards require substantial preliminary data (to be collected during Phase I) and are intended to provide an opportunity to develop, refine, and rigorously test combinations of activities, including sets of interventions for which some or all have already shown promise in controlled or limited settings. We expect that successful projects funded under this call, and which demonstrate promising results, will have the opportunity to apply for Phase II funding, either to GC Africa or directly to our partners.
In all cases, individual project budgets must be representative of the scope and magnitude of the proposed studies and carefully designed to obtain the best possible value out of the award. The winning applicant's institution, organization, or company will also be required to provide assurances regarding its capacity to manage the grant through detailed letters of support from the appropriate research or innovation support office. The AAS reserves the right to conduct due diligence site visits to organizations hosting successful applicants before making final awards.
How to apply: Applications must be submitted through the Portal of AAS Ishango Online Application.
- It is important to go through all the entry requirements on the Award Page (see Link below) before applying.
