UK institutions can apply for a grant to co-design and co-deliver an innovation and enterprise programme for university students in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

This structured yet adaptive program will involve mentoring for 16 university student teams (five students each) from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. These selected teams are working on projects in digital enterprises, green enterprises, social enterprises, or a combination thereof, and their ventures are currently at various stages of development.

The selected partnership will:

• Establish a baseline understanding: Conduct a comprehensive assessment of the current stage of development, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) for each selected student-led enterprise/innovation project.
• Develop tailored support frameworks: Create individualised and actionable frameworks for each project designed to accelerate its progress towards commercialisation.
• Enhance commercialisation potential: Significantly improve the likelihood of successful commercialisation for participating student projects.
• Build student capacity: Equip student teams with practical knowledge, tools, and methodologies essential for navigating the innovation and entrepreneurship journey.

The 2025 Joint Transnational Call will address the SRIA theme 4 “Water and health”, in particular the sub-themes:

• 4.3 on “Innovative water tools and technologies for water quality monitoring and water treatment, remediation and disinfection”
• 4.1 on “Behaviour and effects of contaminants of emerging concern, plastics, endocrine disruptors”.

Links to other SRIA themes will be explored, in particular to the sub-themes:

• 3.3. “Groundwater management” and to the cross-cutting themes on governance,
• 7.1 “Developing methods for more efficient citizen and wider stakeholder engagement” and 7.3 “Supporting the adoption of innovations”.

The African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), with support from the Mastercard Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is launching this Early-Career Research Fellowship program. The initiative will fund up to forty-two (42) early-career researchers to conduct globally competitive research at the host and affiliated institutions of ARUA’s thirteen (13) Centres of Excellence (CoEs).

Each fellowship will last six months, between July 2025 and June 2026. A maximum of four fellows will be assigned to each CoE, with all positions filled by December 2025. At least 70% of the fellowships are reserved for female candidates, and applicants must be no older than 35 years at the time of application.

ARUA will continue to accept applications for the 42 positions until they are all filled,
with a deadline of December 2025. However, candidates who apply before May 15,
2025, will be considered for the first batch of positions. Successful candidates from this
batch will be notified by June 1, 2025, and are expected to start their fellowships on
July 1, 2025.

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