Changing Lanes

Reflecting on our growth over the last 20 years, we recognized the need for strategic shifts in some of our approaches, processes, and practices. As the organization's influence in research and policy drew greater recognition regionally and globally, we explored new frontiers for our work geographically and programmatically. These efforts embodied the spirit of our new strategic plan.

Under the IDRC-funded Women RISE initiative, APHRC has been the lead Health Policy and Research Organization, working with 23 research teams across five continents to facilitate knowledge mobilization, capacity building, and networking. This is new territory for the Center as it expands its reach to other regions of the world. The initiative aims to support action-oriented, gender-transformative research on how women's health intersects with their work – paid or unpaid – in the global COVID-19 response and recovery.

To strengthen our approach to policy engagement, we conducted netmapping of our key stakeholders across priority sectors and embarked on documenting APHRC's in-house policy engagement models.

We are devising ways to institutionalize this through a standard approach that can be adopted for use at the Center. Building on this work, an organizational policy engagement strategy is underway to strengthen our impact pathways.

On the research and related capacity strengthening front, through the Catalyze Impact project in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, we are working to connect African research institutions and governments for increased production, adoption, and utilization of research evidence and innovations by sub-national and national governments. The project is also working to enhance the visibility of African researchers and institutions and increase their capacity to receive funding directly from major research funders for increased African-led implementation research initiatives.

Catalyze Impact is the Center's first initiative designed under the new strategy to address systemic issues in the African R&D ecosystem.

Moreover, through our flagship doctoral fellowship program, we launched iCARTA - Institutionalization of the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) program to digitize resources on CARTA's proven interventions and strengthen the capacity of partner institutions to adopt them in Ph.D. training and building research-supportive environments.

Last year, the Center's Virtual Academy, set up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, moved closer to a fully operational platform. We set up communities of practice, delivered the first set of courses to train the facilitators in online instructional design, and developed three project-based courses.

Our learning mindset in internal and external engagements has meant that we are continually innovating to be better at what we do.

In 2022, the Center adopted a more guided approach to fostering innovation in its program design by launching the Big Ideas and Pipeline Ideas mechanisms.

The Big Ideas mechanism is envisaged to nurture nascent ideas into competitive proposals through much-needed engagement with critical stakeholders in co-designing ideas aligned to our policy goals and long-term impact. The Pipeline Ideas mechanism aims to encourage early career professionals at the Center to innovate and develop niche areas. For the inaugural round, 12 entries were registered, of which eight ideas were awarded a sum of 300,000 USD to pilot and refine the ideas further. We expect this mechanism to be a major driver of the Center's future growth and in designing Center-led initiatives relevant to the local context.