The Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training, and Science in Africa (DELTAS Africa) is a long-term, multimillion dollar programme launched in 2015 to support collaborative consortia led by Africa-based scientists. The programme is aimed at catalysing Africa-led development of world-class research, advancing scientific leadership on the continent, while strengthening African institutions and the research ecosystem. DELTAS Africa is now in its second phase, with 14 research consortia (all in Africa) in 71 partner institutions (53 in Africa) across 35 countries (26 in Africa).
DELTAS Africa seeks to produce researchers who drive locally relevant and high-quality health research impacting policy and practice in Africa.
Progress and Impact of the programme is measured through four strategic areas: scientific quality; research leadership; research management and environments; and enhanced societal engagement in research.
The DELTAS Africa Community Engagement (CE) Initiative
Community engagement in research is crucial for aligning research agenda and study questions with real-world needs. Meaningful community engagement fosters stakeholder ownership, promotes uptake of research outcomes, and contributes to reduction in research waste among several other benefits.
To deliver on strategic focus area 4 – enhanced societal engagement in research, Science for Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation) implements a comprehensive capacity strengthening initiative for CE. This comprises training of African researchers to embed CE in research and influence institutional frameworks, awarding grants to implement CE, guidance, advise and knowledge brokering in CE, and monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) to build the evidence base for CE.
Community Engagement (CE) Grants: DELTAS Africa awards individual grants of up to USD 25,000 to early career researchers and recently, to faculty, who wish to embed community engagement in their research. The aim of this funding scheme is to:
- Enable DELTAS Africa researchers build their community engagement capacity,
- Pilot innovative engagement projects to promote societal impact of their research and,
- Move towards people-centred research.
Forty (40) grants have been awarded since inception of this funding scheme. We showcase these projects.
The CE team measures the success of the scheme using an Outcomes Framework which looks at impact through a number of indicators at three levels: Participant, Awardee and Institution. At the participant level, the areas/domains of focus include participant attitudes, knowledge, behavior, engagement and co-creation. At the awardee level, the domains include awardee CE attitude, knowledge and proficiency. At the institution level, the domains include CE impact specifically policies and or procedures supporting CE in research, and institutional culture, priorities and resource allocation for CE
Read our article giving Top Tips for Supporting Engagement through Seed Funding schemes co-authored by the Wellcome Africa and Asia Programmes
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