Deadline for applications: 1 Apr 2020
Overview of Evidence Leaders in Africa Initiative
The new Award is part of the Evidence Leaders in Africa (ELA) initiative, which is working to expand leadership for the use of evidence in policy formulation and implementation by African governments. The initiative is a collaboration between the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP), and is implemented in East and West Africa. The initiative is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The initiative seeks to inspire and empower AAS scholars to proactively engage governments to use science and innovation, as well as champion Evidence-Informed Decision-Making (EIDM) in East and West Africa. Specifically, the project seeks to:
- Increase the number of academic leaders championing EIDM in Africa
- Increase the number of government agencies in East and West Africa taking specific actions to institutionalise EIDM
- Deepen evidence and expand space for EIDM learning in Africa
The Evidence Leadership Award
The ELA initiative invites AAS fellows, affiliates and grantees who are innovating with interventions that promote, support and enable the use of evidence in decision-making in government institutions to apply for a leadership award to recognize these efforts.
The purpose of the Award is to increase efforts by AAS scholars and researchers that seek to promote, support, and enable evidence-informed decision-making within government agencies in their countries.
The award will be given to individuals only and will cover initiatives that promote, support or enable EIDM including but not limited to initiatives that:
- Synthesise and repackage evidence for decision-makers
- Repackage evidence for decision-makers
- Use multi-media/innovative technologies in repackaging and presenting evidence to decision-makers
- Facilitate regular discussions of evidence on policy issues by policymakers and researchers (dialogues)
- Build and sustain relationships and interactions between researchers and policymakers
- Engage and facilitate media to improve media coverage of research and other evidence
- Engage civil society and communities with evidence
- Build capacity of decision-makers or other evidence users in interpretation and application of evidence to improve the uptake of evidence in decision-making
- Advocate for and/or support the development of tools and guidelines that support evidence use
- Provide technical advice to decision-makers to improve decision-making
- Advocate for and support the strengthening of institutional leadership, systems, structures, budgets, and capacities for enabling EIDM
- Assess and evaluate the effectiveness of EIDM interventions
For more information, or to apply, visit the call webpage.