Programmes
We fund researchers and provide them access to training and skills development that can address African health challenges. Since our establishment in 2015, we have spent £3 million on researchers across Africa.
Information for our researchers
Funding Applications process
On-going support
Research Development Fellowships
Our fellowships are awarded to African researchers who are working on addressing important challenges for human health in Africa. Fellows are placed at world-class research institutions in Africa and Europe, for three to nine-month placements with funds up to £47,000. Find out more about our application process.
Read about our past fellows and their projects. For tips and advice on submitting a successful application, read this post. Learn more about what our researchers are doing and the impact they are having on African health research.
Applications for funding open in June/July with a deadline in September. Fellows are expected to travel and commence their fellowships by March the following year after being awarded.
Towards Leadership Programme
This programme is directed at winning grant funding, by empowering effective teams, collaborating internationally, influencing key stakeholders and building rewarding researcher careers. We host research leaders at two residential workshops, and a virtual workshop for a period of 12 months.
We launched the first cohort in 2019, commissioned through the UK Global Challenges Research Fund. After which our latest cohorts have funded 20 researchers with support from the Medical Research Council.
The Programme themes are based on leadership, collaboration and learning: Researcher as Leader, Effective Researcher, Researcher as Communicator, Compelling Applicant, Researcher as Manager.
Applications open in February/March and the programme aims to start in October/November.
Excell
We support our partner institutions with research leadership support, by working with their fellows to enhance research capacity that saves lives.
Excell builds on the Towards Leadership Programme, completed in two years and spread across five workshops and two conferences.
Grant Writing
We work to strengthen the health research capacity of scientists in Africa by providing the knowledge required to win competitive funding from regional, national, and international funders.
Our Grant Writing programme is offered to scientists in the stage of their research career where they are actively seeking for independent funding. Our researchers have gone on to win more than £10 million in funding.
The programme is offered in three different cohorts in the year: May/June, June/July and October /November. Our workshops are facilitated by world-class research experts and experienced research managers, who all have vast experience in writing successful grants, serving on or managing grant review panels, and cultivating research leaders of the future
Find out what our participants have said about the programme.
Women in Research
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Seed Funds
The purpose of the Seed Fund is to enable RDF Fellows on completion of their fellowship to embed the skills they have acquired to develop their own projects at their employing organisation. This serves as a stepping-stone to winning substantive research funding, building their own research team and achieving research independence.
The Seed Fund supports a pilot project to produce preliminary data, refine research questions and develop, adapt or validate innovative methods and data collection. This type of preliminary or pilot data can make substantive research funding proposals to funders such as the Wellcome Trust, NIH and the MRC more compelling and competitive.
Fellows demonstrate how the pilot project builds on their fellowship and how the outputs will inform the larger, longer substantive project and contribute to their longer-term career plans and gaining research independence. Fellows undertake other activities such as visiting collaborators or presenting at a conference that will support development of their independent research programme. Most activities should be undertaken at the research organisation in Africa which is your employing organisation.
Tumani Corrah Prize of Excellence
The Africa Research Excellence Fund (AREF) was founded by Professor Tumani Corrah KBE in 2015, to support the careers of African researchers, giving them the steppingstones needed to become outstanding research leaders in their respective fields, ensuring that talent is retained in Africa to address the continent’s unique health research needs.
The Prize recognizes excellence in research, personal development or service that is attributable in large part to participation in an AREF programme. We use this prize to recognise the achievements of AREF alumni who have made an impact in their field and demonstrated their potential to be research leaders. The prize fund was a result of a fund-raising activity in honour of Professor Corrah KBE, recognising his immense contribution as a mentor and benefactor to many aspiring clinicians and scientists
Tumani Corrah Prize Winners (2022-Present)
Open Access Publication
AREF has partnered with Open Research Africa to launce the AREF F100 Gateway to ensure AREF alumni have open access publication tools for their research, talks and opinions on capacity-building topics in Africa. This is part of our Excell Leadership Programme funded by Robert Bosch Foundation.
The Gateway builds a collection of evidence, experiential case studies, resources and training material to support the career and professional development of health researchers in Africa and support capacity building across the continent. We recognize that learning and knowledge sharing can occur in variety forms, thus this gateway accepts multiple formats of information sharing, including accessible posters and presentation slides as well as peer reviewed research and reviews.
Only researchers and scientists who have benefitted from the AREF Research Development Fellowship, Grant Writing workshops or other leadership programmes that we run and have transitioned into our alumni community are eligible to publish their work on the site.
You can visit the Gateway and browse through our Alumni’s work.