The Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) in sub-Saharan Africa is a 5-year initiative which aims to strengthen the capacities of Science Granting Councils (SGCs) in sub-Saharan Africa in order to support research and evidence-based policies that will contribute to economic and social development. The objectives of this Initiative are to strengthen the ability of Councils to:
- Manage research;
- Design and monitor research programmes based on the use of robust science, technology and innovation (STI) indicators;
- Support knowledge exchange with the private sector;
- Establish partnerships between Councils and other science system actors.
The Initiative is jointly funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF).
Theme 3 of the SGCI aims to strengthen the capacity of SGCs to establish scientific cooperation with each other and with other science system actors, and to foster public-private research collaboration and exchange of knowledge for accelerated socio-economic development. The theme specifically seeks to:
- Strengthen the capacity of SGCs to foster public-private linkages and to support demand-driven, collaborative public-private research partnerships;
- Support SGCs to design cross-country cooperation agreements and to manage cooperative grants as a mechanism to fund bilateral or regional initiatives; and
- Foster learning and exchange of knowledge and experiences.
Under this theme the SGCI, through the ACTS consortium, offers an opportunity for interested countries to participate in bilateral or regional scientific collaboration through what is called a Cooperation Grant Initiative (CGI). Under this initiative pairs or groups of countries will come together to fund competitive research projects in a mutually agreed thematic area. During the partner consultative meeting held from 2-7 July 2017 in Pretoria, representatives of the EAC countries identified manufacturing as a regional research priority for joint research grants. This is to address Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) challenges facing the manufacturing sector in East Africa.
