In Africa, there is a split between business, angel donors, risk capitalist and science. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, few research and development (R&D) outputs have been expanded or commercialized and a small number of patents at 0.6%. Failure to finance also adds to the challenge by which African innovation often does not just grow beyond a laboratory idea or prototype.
GCAiN is accessible via http://gcain.africa/
Today, the African academy (AAS) has announced the creation of an ambitious African innovator network for linking African innovators to partners, providing support, assisting them to scale up their inventions and facilitating the adoption of the policy.
Dr Moses Alobo, GC-Africa Program Manager, said, “Will provide ambitious people with the tools they need to thrive, including mentors, potential new markets and finance.” “Innovation is a risky affair that requires a long-term investment that does not always have immediate results, which is why, at GC Africa, we offer it as sustainable and long-term research and innovation funding strategy,” he added.
(GCAiN) is a product of GC Africa, the African Science Development Goals program (STISA 2024) and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs 2030) which aim to help Africa to achieve scientific innovation by providing seed and full subsidy funding to the most impressive innovators in the continent.
In the context of a 2018 survey of 490 African innovators who received the grants from Grand Challenges partners such as the Foundation Bill & Melinda Gates, USAID, and Grand Challenges of Canada, the GCAiN was developed. GCAiN is a granting initiative. Many of these innovators have developed transformational innovations that deal with maternal, neonatal, and child health as well as providing school feeding programmes. However, as key innovation setbacks, innovators have described restricted entrepreneurship capacity growth, poor funding, weak legislation and lack of access to important business connections.
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In order for innovation partners to also be part of the virtual network, including donors, venture capitalists, incubators and policymakers, GCAiN will connect innovators to various innovation players in an economic way to facilitate access to value chain information and also shed insight on the growth of innovations on the whole continent.
In addition, GCAiN aims to promote collaboration within Africa in order to guarantee local solutions to local problems. “This is a game-turning device for the area of innovation that will help our ideas to become marketable and impact African lives,” said Laud Anthony Basing, a Ghanaian diagnostic company.
Data Source: eurekalert.org