2025 Call for Applications
The Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund was established in 2012, with generous support from The ALBORADA Trust. The Fund supports pairs of researchers (post-doctoral level and above) from the University of Cambridge (or an affiliated institution such as the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, NIAB and British Antarctic Survey) and African institutions, across all disciplines, to initiate and/or strengthen research collaborations. To date, 367 awards have been made, to enable Cambridge researchers to engage with African colleagues from 38 African countries. Some awardees have been able to use the preliminary results from their seed fund / research collaboration to apply for and win significant funding (e.g. Royal Society/Leverhulme Awards, Global Challenges Research Fund, etc.).
The Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund competitively awards grants of between £1,000 and £20,000, for:
- research costs (such as reagents, fieldwork and equipment)
- research-related travel between Cambridge and Africa
- conducting research training activities in Africa (e.g. setting up courses/workshops).
Please read carefully the including eligibility criteria, before applying.
Should you be successful, there are Terms & Conditions in receiving a Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund award, then the types of award letters that would need to be signed by the Cambridge and African PI are shown here.
Particularly note that the ALBORADA Research Fund cannot pay for overheads, PI salaries, administration costs, bench fees or for researchers to attend conferences.
FAQs
How to apply
The online application form has been designed to allow both applicants (Cambridge- and Africa-based) to log in, update, save and eventually submit electronically.
To access the form, the Cambridge based applicant must Register here. Only applicants with @cam.ac.uk, @sanger.ac.uk, @babraham.ac.uk, @bas.ac.uk and @niab.com email addresses can register.
The Cambridge-based applicant must then log in to the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund application form, where they will see the words "Invite a 2nd applicant to view/edit this submission". Click on this link in order to invite the Africa-based applicant to register and edit the forms.
If you are eligible to apply, but are unable to register on the page above, then please contact alboradafund@cambridge-africa.cam.ac.uk.
If you have already registered, please Log In to access the form.
The deadline to submit an application for collaborative research funding is 5th September 2025