Our Focus: Strengthening Africa’s preparedness, outbreak response and immunisation systems through evidence generation, implementation research, research coordination and policy engagement.

The core areas of work focus on pandemic preparedness and response; research coordination and priority setting; data sharing and governance; and vaccine implementation research, including missed opportunities for vaccination, vaccination timeliness, vaccine uptake and behavioural determinants, new vaccine introduction, and health system readiness. Key programmes include the GloPID R Africa Hub, which maps pandemic preparedness initiatives across Africa, coordinates outbreak research and priority setting, and supports research on vaccination timeliness, missed opportunities for vaccination, HPV vaccine uptake, and broader vaccine implementation.

Our Focus: Strengthen African clinical research systems through improved registration, transparency, governance, data quality and interoperability.

This area focuses on clinical trial registration, research transparency, registry governance, data quality and interoperability, regulatory alignment, and research ethics and governance, including using registry data to support research and decision-making. Key programmes include the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR), South African National Clinical Trials Register (SANCTR), SECRET Uganda registry strengthening initiative, clinical trial registry dashboards, engagement and alignment with WHO ICTRP, clinical trial transparency research, and broader efforts to strengthen clinical trial registration systems across Africa.

Our Focus: Develop and strengthen integrated, interoperable, and responsible data systems and analytical approaches that enable data sharing, research intelligence, and evidence-informed decision-making to support research prioritisation, policy development, and the adoption of health innovations across Africa.

This thematic area focuses on research intelligence, data integration and interoperability, data sharing and governance, data stewardship, data quality, data visualisation, research landscape mapping, monitoring and evaluation, evidence gap identification, research funding analysis, innovation readiness, and decision support. It promotes responsible use, sharing, and visualisation of research and health data to improve accessibility, transparency, and translation into actionable intelligence.

Key programmes and activities include the ALIGN Project, REDCap-based data integration, data sharing and governance initiatives, data quality assessment and strengthening, research data visualisation, innovation and intervention pipeline mapping, research and funding landscape analyses, PACTR and SANCTR dashboards, and the development of integrated decision support dashboards and tools for researchers, funders, policymakers and other stakeholders.

These functions underpin and strengthen all three thematic areas across the Global Health Portfolio. Evidence Synthesis and Knowledge Translation: Provides the methodological bridge between research, policy, and practice through systematic and scoping reviews, rapid evidence synthesis, evidence gap mapping, policy briefs, stakeholder engagement, knowledge translation, methodological support, and translating evidence into policy and implementation recommendations.

Capacity Strengthening and Mentorship: Builds sustainable research capacity and strengthens the pipeline of African researchers and research leaders through postgraduate and postdoctoral development, internships, mentorship and supervision, training in evidence synthesis, implementation research and data analysis, and partnerships with African universities and research institutions.