The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is a non-aligned, non-political, not-for-profit Pan-African organization headquartered in Nairobi, with a hosting agreement with the government of Kenya. The AAS’s vision is to see transformed lives on the African continent through science.
It has a tripartite mandate: to recognize excellence through its highly prestigious fellowship and award schemes; to provide advisory and think tank functions for shaping the continent’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) strategies and policies; and to implement key STI programmes aimed at addressing Africa’s developmental challenges.
requirement
AAS and its partners seeked the creation of a global public good that aggregates clinical research center intelligence across the African ecosystem. The proposed platform had to include links to relevant initiatives that look at policies and laws that support the conduct of trials, enable timely ethics and regulatory review, address import/export of relevant commodities and bio-specimens, address procurement and contracting systems, and strengthen the broader governance architecture for clinical research in Africa.
This will ensure that while the research capacity is being developed the necessary enabling environment to do research and undertake clinical trials is also being strengthened.
objectives
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Promote African research centers by providing a platform that improves their visibility, optimizes the use of grants across research centers and helps them sustain operations and staffing beyond individual grants through collaboration across the clinical research ecosystem.
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Reduce unnecessary duplication of effort in identifying, collecting and submitting clinical trial site feasibility assessments at the beginning of every new project.
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Develop a robust, open access, and up-to-date database of the African clinical research landscape including a catalogue of existing clinical trial capacity, regulatory requirements, performance, and predictability for clinical and translational sciences across countries.
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Increase capability to understand where there are duplication and gaps in capacity and funding and enable transparency of future investments and their impact.
