Overview

Posted Opportunities 0
Founded Since 1850

Company Description

Our Focus

Positively impacting African lives through science and innovation.

OUR STRATEGIC PLAN

Science for Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation) is a pan-African, non-profit, public charitable organisation created to support, strengthen, and promote science and innovation in Africa.

We believe science and innovation will be central to delivering sustainable development for our continent. This strategic plan outlines how we will contribute towards a strengthened African science and innovation ecosystem for the period 2023-2027. Despite an abundance of natural resources, Africa still lags in investments in transformative science and innovation. The continent is challenged by, high disease burden, climate shocks and millions suffering from food insecurity.

The SFA Foundation’s strategic direction is driven by the premise that science and innovation provide the tools to tackle these major societal challenges. As a pan-African organization, we have drawn lessons from our external environment to influence how we organize internally in alignment with the African Union’s Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA 2024), the African Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SFA Foundation serves Africa’s science and innovation ecosystem through the design, funding and oversight of world-class science and innovation programmes implemented through a well-established grant making scheme. SFA Foundation recognizes the power of collective effort and is intentional and proactive in the development, maintenance and growth of equitable strategic partnerships and networks. We aim to co-create solutions via dialogue and prioritize long-term ownership and sustainability.

We serve the African research ecosystem by designing, funding and managing programmes that support excellent science and innovation; and that build and reinforce environments that are conducive for scientists to thrive and produce quality research that impacts development.

Our Values

Respect

We embody respect as a fundamental principle. We commit to uphold the dignity of all our constituents, their qualities and achievements and their right to apply their abilities to supporting science and innovation in Africa. We strive to be empathetic in our dealings with our colleagues and others and recognise that each individual role is important.

Excellence

We strive for excellence, from quality science outputs to best governance practices; we push ourselves and our partners to aim for the highest standards in everything we are doing.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We embody diversity, equity and inclusion in everything we do by bringing everyone along the journey. We are committed to mainstreaming diversity, equity, and inclusion and cascading this to all the institutions that take part in our programmes. We ensure a level playing field and empowerment for all organisations and individuals engaging with SFA Foundation and in all our external interactions.

Accountability

We are answerable for our individual and collective actions to our grantees, partners, and beneficiaries of our investments. We take responsibility and ownership towards clearly defined goals. We uphold high levels of integrity and will strive to ensure that we remain accountable to all.

Our goal is to strengthen pan-African-defined science priorities,to support globally competitive research, to enable dignified and sustainable science careers on the Continent, to strengthen high-quality research environments, to support scientific innovation, and to promote actionable scientific excellence in the policy, knowledge and practice arenas.

We do this by leveraging thought leadership, productive partnerships, and networks to mobilize resources for investments in long-term science and innovation programmes on the continent.

OUR THEMATIC AREAS

Guided by our assessment of Africa’s science landscape, we commit over the next five years to focus on three key interrelated priority areas of science: Health; Agricultural; and Climate and Environmental Science. The SFA Foundation will support researchers and innovators developing impactful solutions across discovery, translational and implementation sciences.

Health

We will build and support programs aiming to reduce the health burden, to promote transdisciplinary research on the nexus of health and food and nutrition, energy, climate change, environment, political economy and public policy. Driven by emerging priorities on the continent, our work will span pandemic sciences, communicable and non-communicable diseases, genomics, clinical research and trials.

Climate & Environment

We will promote African scientific leadership in climate and environmental science. We will bring the best of Africa’s science together to collate and assess the evidence for regional governments to support informed decisions with a vision to have Africa’s climate change science represented in global discussions on priority actions for the continent.

Agriculture

We will leverage science and innovation by supporting researchers to uncover innovative pathways, interventions and techniques that optimize agricultural output while enhancing resilience and adaptation.

Science for Africa Foundation