The National Commission for Science and Technology (NCST) has disclosed that the launch of the much-awaited Grand Challenge Malawi will take place on August 30, 2023, at the Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe.

The Minister of Education Madalitso Kambauwa-Wirima is expected to officially launch the challenge under the theme: “Unlocking Strategic Investments Through Collaborative Research”.

Through the Grand Challenge Malawi, NCST envisages to support the most creative scientists in Malawi to collaborate with their partners in Africa and globally, to implement research that fosters innovation in solving the most critical development challenges in Malawi and Africa.

NCST Acting Director General Gift Kadzamira said the major objective of the Grand Challenge Malawi is, among others, to strengthen the national innovation ecosystem and build capacity and capability of local researchers/ innovators and R&D infrastructure.

Further, Kadzamira added, the initiative aims to leverage resources and expertise from public, private and development partners for effective and efficient execution of priority areas of research and innovations.

“We also want to optimize financing of the value chain of research and innovation from ideation, discovery, development, delivery and transition to scale. Finally, we want to launch a request for proposal (RFP) to solicit applications from scientists in Malawi to collaborate with their partners in Africa and globally, to implement research that fosters innovation in solving the most critical development challenges,” she narrated.

Kadzamira said the launch of the Grand Challenge Malawi will facilitate the launch of a request for proposal (RFP) on research that fosters innovation to solve the most critical development challenges in Malawi and Africa.

The Commission also expects a summary of strategies to support improved R&D and innovation funding towards AU target of 1 percent R&D funding as a percentage of national GDP; a broad network of African and global partners established to share ideas and resources to advance R&D and innovation development agenda to promote scientific research excellence and scale and make valuable contributions to society.