Africa Health Collaborative Research Fund 2026: Up to $22,000 for Collaborative Early-Career Research Teams

Africa Health Collaborative Research Fund 2026: Up to $22,000 for Collaborative Early-Career Research Teams

Current status

The Africa Health Collaborative’s 2026 Research Fund is in its invited full-proposal stage. The Expression of Interest (EoI) deadline passed on 15 August 2026 at 12:00 GMT, and the official call says EoI results were announced on 7 September 2026 at 12:00 GMT. Its “Applications Closed” label applies to that EoI stage; approved EoI teams are still being invited to submit full proposals by 7 November 2026 at 12:00 GMT. This is not an open second chance to submit an EoI: a new applicant cannot enter at the full-proposal stage.

The call page’s heading area still displays the 15 August EoI deadline, while its second application stage separately gives 7 November for invited full proposals. Read those dates by stage: the August date is past, but the November date remains the operative submission deadline for teams whose EoI was approved.

Accordingly, this listing is useful now only to teams already advanced from the first stage. If your team submitted an EoI and received approval, follow the invitation and instructions sent by the Africa Health Collaborative (AHC) and prepare one joint full proposal by the published deadline. If you did not submit an EoI or were not approved, the official page does not describe a route to join this cycle. It also does not announce a 2027 call. Check the official page for any later notice rather than relying on an assumed annual schedule.

Fund at a glance

The official call describes a partnership contribution rather than one central award paid to every team. For a bilateral project, the two partner institutions each award up to $11,000 USD to investigators at their own institution, creating a combined maximum of $22,000 USD. Multilateral awards are scaled at the same per-institution ceiling. The actual budget and eligible expenses must follow the participating institutions’ rules; a team should not assume it can freely pool every allocation or transfer it across institutions.

The research theme is specifically health human resources policy or health financing policy in primary health care in Sub-Saharan Africa. A proposal should make the connection to one of those policy areas clear in its research question, design and expected use. A clinical or service-delivery study without a credible workforce-policy or financing-policy focus does not match the stated theme simply because it takes place in a primary care setting.

Who may submit at this stage

Only teams that have passed the first stage should treat the November date as an actionable deadline. The official page says that eligible applicants who submitted an EoI and were approved will be contacted and invited to provide a full application. It asks for one joint application per project. The call page does not present a general application path for new participants after the EoI window has closed.

The underlying eligibility rules remain important as approved teams develop their full proposal. Each project must be led by ECRs from AHC member institutions and have either two ECRs from two member partners (bilateral) or three ECRs from three or more member partners (multilateral). It must also include masters, doctoral or post-doctoral trainees. Each eligible applicant may lead only one application. People from outside the member institutions, including other universities, community organizations, government and NGOs, may take part when the proposal explains their contribution, but they cannot lead an application.

The nine institutions named in the call are Addis Ababa University, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), African Leadership University (ALU), Amref International University, Ashesi University, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Moi University, University of Cape Town and University of Toronto. The ECR definition differs by institution, so collaborators should use Appendix 1 rather than assume a single career-age rule. For example, the call uses appointment rank or time in rank at Addis Ababa University, remaining contract time for doctorate holders at AIMS, a five-year research-appointment window at ALU, and different qualification, publication or appointment criteria at Amref, Ashesi, KNUST, Moi, Cape Town and Toronto. Verify every proposed lead’s status against the institution-specific wording.

Institution-specific project conditions in Appendix 2 also apply. Among the examples on the official page, AIMS requires a substantive mathematical component and graduate student researchers; Ashesi calls for an interdisciplinary link between primary healthcare policy and specified fields, plus a graduate or undergraduate student; and KNUST requires graduate students, assistant lecturers and lecturers in their first two years. Addis Ababa University specifies a multidisciplinary and innovative primary-health-care or health-systems approach with graduate trainees. ALU lists eligible thematic areas and expects innovation, practical impact, interdisciplinary methods, scalability and sustainability. Amref expects innovative work with potential to affect health-system practice and policy, while Moi specifies affiliation to Public Health or related health sciences. Read the full entry for each partner institution before fixing the project plan.

What the award can support

The fund is intended as initial support for developing or expanding high-quality research by ECRs and enabling them to seek support for a later phase. The call describes activities such as joint workshops, researcher exchanges and research exchange groups between member institutions. Its general eligible-cost examples include travel between institutions for researchers and trainees, costs of organizing workshops and meetings, and research expenses including consumables up to a maximum of $1,500 USD.

The general cost table excludes replacement research or teaching costs, directly incurred staff such as research assistants, directly allocated costs including applicants’ time, indirect or estates costs, equipment and conference attendance. The appendices also specify exceptions or additional conditions by institution. Addis Ababa University, for example, allows modest graduate-student support, research-output conference attendance and publication-related expenses while excluding research assistants, applicants’ time and equipment. ALU lists some additional eligible items, including graduate research stipends under its intern policy, data-related external consultation, field visits, software licenses, capacity-building sessions, dissemination workshops and limited overhead; it also lists excluded costs. Amref and Ashesi describe support for study instruments, data collection, research-related travel and dissemination. Toronto explicitly excludes graduate stipends and scholarships.

For a partnership spanning institutions with different rules, design and justify the institution-level budgets separately. The official Appendix 3 is the controlling source for each partner. Do not carry a cost across from one partner’s budget rules to another without checking, and confirm any interpretation with the relevant institutional contact before finalizing the application.

Full-proposal steps for approved EoI teams

1. Confirm the invitation and instructions. The November submission stage is by invitation after EoI approval. Use the invitation from AHC to confirm the submission method, template, any team-specific instructions and the process for questions. The official page says one joint application is requested for each project.
2. Recheck the team against the call. Confirm the ECR status of each lead under Appendix 1, the bilateral or multilateral composition, trainee participation, the one-application limit for each lead, and every partner’s Appendix 2 conditions. Do not rely on a collaborator’s affiliation alone as proof of eligibility.
3. Build a single research plan around the stated theme. Explain the policy problem in primary health care, the contribution of each institution and how the work can inform practice or policy. Keep the scale proportionate to the maximum 18-month project period and the institution-by-institution award amounts.
4. Prepare the budgets under each institution’s rules. Map each requested cost to the eligible-cost provisions in Appendix 3 and include only costs the relevant institution can award. Account for any institution-specific approvals listed in Appendix 4 before submission.
5. Address the review criteria and EDI. The joint review committee assesses project design and rationale, collaborator complementarity, potential translational impact and demonstrability, capacity for future collaboration or funding, and relevance to AHC activities. The call also asks teams to consider equality/equity, diversity and inclusion, including gender, indigenous peoples, disabilities and sectors.
6. Submit by the date in the invitation. The published full-proposal deadline is 7 November 2026 at 12:00 GMT. Allow time for the required institutional approvals and follow the invitation’s instructions if they provide operational details not repeated on the public call page.

The public page describes the first-stage EoI process for context: one template was completed for the full team, reviewed by the home institution, and approved proposals could be shared in a public repository when a co-applicant was still needed. That route belonged to the now-closed EoI stage; it should not be presented as a way for new teams to begin an application now.

Approvals, assessment and planning

Appendix 4 lists approvals required before submission at several institutions. ALU requires proposal and protocol approval by the Project Activation Lead and Healthcare Programs Director, plus budget approval by the Project Activation Lead and Provost. Amref lists the Division of Research and Community Extension and says ethical review by Amref ESRC and NACOSTI must be granted before fieldwork. KNUST lists the Head of Department and Director of the Office of Grants and Research. Moi lists consent by the School of Postgraduate, Research and Innovation and/or its ethical review board (ISERC). The call lists no institution-level approval for Addis Ababa University, AIMS, Ashesi, University of Cape Town or University of Toronto. These entries do not remove any other institutional or research-ethics requirements that apply to a specific study.

A joint review committee with representatives from member institutions assesses academic merit against five criteria: project design and rationale; collaborator complementarity; potential translational impact and demonstrability of impact; capacity for future collaboration or funding; and relevance and value to AHC activities. A persuasive full proposal should show why the collaboration itself improves the work. Identify the methods, relationships, data or setting each partner contributes, and how the combined team can produce findings that would be harder to obtain independently.

The 18-month maximum calls for a focused workplan. State the deliverables that can reasonably be completed within the funded period and connect them to a plausible next phase, since the fund’s stated purpose is initial support that can help investigators pursue later funding. The call’s EDI request should also shape the collaboration: explain practical choices that value different perspectives and knowledge, and consider the dimensions named by AHC rather than adding an unsupported general statement at the end.

Questions and official source

Questions about the call can be sent to [email protected]. The Africa Secretariat is based in the Office of the Vice-President, International, at the University of Toronto. The official Research Fund page contains the 2026 call, application-stage information and Appendices 1 through 4. Applicants should consult those materials and their invitation as the authoritative instructions, particularly for current submission logistics and institution-specific requirements.

The dates and terms in this listing distinguish the closed EoI stage from the invited full-proposal stage: the EoI deadline was 15 August 2026, EoI results were announced 7 September 2026, and the public page gives 7 November 2026 as the full-proposal deadline for approved invitees. AHC states that funded projects commence from 1 January 2027 and run for a maximum of 18 months. The official page does not announce a subsequent cycle. New applicants should therefore not treat this listing as an open EoI call, while invited teams should use their own AHC communication to complete the current stage.

Official call: https://africahealthcollaborative.org/research/research-fund/