London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

African scientists working in collaboration with researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine are recipients of major funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Department for International Development (DFID), to establish cutting-edge research and training programmes across the continent.

The DELTAS Africa programmes establish world-class research environments at African universities with a strong focus on creating training opportunities for the next generation of researchers. In total, the scheme will award over £46 million (approximately $70 million US dollars) over an initial period of five years.

The programmes are led from universities and research institutes in Ghana, Kenya, Mali, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. All the programmes involve collaboration across the continent, including between French-speaking and English-speaking countries, and with international research centres.

Professor Hazel Dockrell, Special Advisor on Partnerships in Africa at the School, said: "It is great that the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is a partner in four of the successful DELTAS consortia, as well as a collaborator on a fifth, continuing the important and excellent work begun with key partner institutions and through our contributions to four of the previous Wellcome Trust funded African Institutions Capacity Strengthening Consortia."

Professor Alison Elliott from the School, who is based at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) will lead a £4.7 million ($7.2 million US dollars) programme: Makerere University UVRI Centre of Excellence for Infection & Immunity Research and Training (MUII-plus). The programme will offer fellowships for training African research leaders in bioinformatics, immunity and infectious diseases. Their research will focus on infectious diseases including parasitology, the interactions between infection and non-communicable diseases, and emerging and re-emerging infections - particularly zoonoses.

Fellowships will cover all career levels and will expand on the success of the current infection and immunity research and training programme at Makerere University and UVRI (MUII) that has already leveraged significant funding for further research.

Dr Dickson Chibanda from the University of Zimbabwe is awarded £4.2 million ($6.6 million US dollars) to lead the African Mental Health Research Initiative (AMARI) in collaboration with researchers from the Centre for Global Mental Health - a joint centre at the School and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London.

There are only 11 psychiatrists in Zimbabwe and a mounting burden of mental health disorders linked to HIV, poverty and gender-based violence. A vastly underserved discipline in sub-Saharan Africa, mental health is becoming of increasing concern to governments with only limited intervention programmes available. Through Fellowships, the AMARI initiative will develop a group of outstanding mental health researchers in sub-Saharan Africa. A strong focus will be on the development of community based intervention strategies with the aim of addressing the treatment gap that exists in sub-Saharan Africa.

Joint Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health, the School's Professor Ricardo Araya, said: "We are proud to be part of this consortium to strengthen capacity building in Africa. We have a long track record working with these institutions in other research projects. We consider this award a major recognition of the importance of global mental health globally and in particular in Africa where it has been so badly neglected for far too long. We thank the Wellcome Trust for taking the lead on this important field."

The School's Jim Todd is involved with a consortium in which Masters and PhD students across Africa will be trained to become experts in biostatistics with the Sub-Saharan African Consortium for Advanced Biostatistical Training (S²ACABT) project.

The training programme will address a fundamental gap in expertise in the area of biostatistics, a discipline that is essential for a broad range of research areas and critical for developing robust research questions. The £3.5 million ($5.6 million US Dollars) Consortium is led by Professor Tobias Chirwa from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Outstanding geneticists from across West Africa will be brought together to address the underlying causes of both communicable and non-communicable diseases in African populations, in a project led by researchers at the University of Ghana. The programme is led by Dr Gordon Akanzuwine Awandare and involves the School's Professor David Conway. The £5.3 million ($8.3 million US dollars) project will expand the already-established training programme led by the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP).

The School is also a collaborator on the Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders (IDeAL) - a high quality training programme designed to develop outstanding young African scientists into world-class research leaders. This £8 million project is based at the Kemri-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya and led by Dr Samson M Kinyanjui.

The vision for DELTAS Africa is that early next year the awards will be managed by a new research initiative in Africa, AESA (Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa), which has been created by the African Academy of Sciences and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). AESA has been working in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and DFID.