African Academy of Sciences

The African Academy of Sciences (AAS)  is a pan African organisation headquartered in Kenya, which aims to drive sustainable development in Africa through science technology and innovation. It has a tripartite mandate of pursuing excellence by recognising scholars and achievers; providing advisory and think tank functions for shaping the continent’s strategies and policies; and implementing key science, technology and innovation programmes that impact on developmental challenges.

The AAS is the only continental academy in Africa enjoying the support and recognition of NEPAD and the African Union as well as several governments and major international partners. These bodies also recognise the think-tank functions of the Academy and its increasing role in setting the research agenda for the future development of the continent.
The AAS is implementing programmes in partnership with pan African and international organisations.

In 2015, the AAS launched the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa, a platform created in collaboration with the New Partnership for Africa’s (NEPAD) Agency. AESA is an agenda setting and funding platform to support the development of Africa’s research leadership and promote scientific excellence and innovation to overcome some of Africa’s developmental challenges. Programmes falling under AESA are:

Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science (DELTAS) Africa, a scheme to support the Africa-led development of world class researchers and research leaders in Africa over an initial five-year period (2015-2020) and implemented with the support of the NEPAD Agency and funding from the Wellcome Trust and the UK government.

Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa), aimed at supporting the creation of extraordinary innovations that address Africa’s health and developmental challenges.

The scheme seeks to promote Africa-led scientific innovations to help countries better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by  awarding seed and full grants to the continent’s most impressive solutions.

Good Grant Financial Practice (GFGP), which is developing an internationally accepted standard for good financial grant practice, an assessment tool to measure performance against the standard, and to support training and future management of the GFGP certification.

Climate Impact Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement(CIRCLE), which is a partnership between the AAS and the UK-based Association of Commonwealth Universities is offering a 100 fellowships to 40 post-masters and 60 postdoctoral researchers to spend a year in institutions outside their own studying the impact of climate change on the continent.

Other AAS initiatives

As part of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), a strategic area of focus outlined in the Strategic Plan of the AAS (2013-2018), the AAS is implementing the:

Science Equipment Policy initiative, an initiative to promote the creation of policies that will make it easier for institutions to procure, install, use, service, maintain and dispose of equipment based on their research needs implemented in partnership with the International Foundation of Science.

Capacity Building through Mentoring African Scientists in Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Research, mentors young scientists and builds capacity in cell biology and regenerative medicine in Africa.