Locally Led, Regionally Grounded: CHINNOVA’s First Research Cohort Advances Climate and Health Science in West and Central Africa

A new cohort of 10 locally led research projects has been selected for funding to generate the evidence needed to address the growing health impacts of climate change in West and Central Africa. Through the  Climate Change and Health Innovation Hub for West and Central Africa (CHINNOVA), the projects will receive a total of USD 700,000 in funding to support context-specific research, strengthen regional research capacity, and contribute to more climate-resilient health systems.

A Region Facing Compounding Risks

Across West and Central Africa, the health consequences of climate change are already unfolding. Rising temperatures are expanding the geographic range and transmission dynamics of vector-borne diseases. Erratic rainfall, prolonged droughts, and increasingly severe flooding events are threatening food and water security, displacing communities, and overwhelming health infrastructure already operating under significant strain.

These are not isolated or short-term disruptions. They are interconnected pressures that demand sustained, evidence-informed responses across multiple sectors and systems. Yet for years, much of the research informing climate-health interventions in the region has remained fragmented, externally driven, and insufficiently embedded within local institutions and realities. Policymakers and health systems across the sub-region have too often relied on evidence produced elsewhere to guide decisions that are deeply contextual and local in nature.

It is within this context that CHINNOVA was established under the Advancing Research for Climate and Health (ARCH) initiative. Led by the Association of African Universities (AAU) in partnership with the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use, Institut Pasteur de Côte d’Ivoire, and Université Omar Bongo, and supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the consortium seeks to strengthen climate-resilient health systems across West and Central Africa through research, innovation, collaboration, and capacity strengthening.

From Regional Call to Funded Cohort

The response to CFP1 demonstrated both the urgency of the climate-health challenge and the depth of research capacity that already exists across the region. Launched in October 2025, the call attracted more than 300 Expressions of Interest and over 200 full proposals from universities, accredited research institutions, non-governmental organisations, and multi-stakeholder teams. During the six-week submission window alone, CHINNOVA’s bilingual Grants Management System registered more than 600 users, underscoring the scale of regional engagement and institutional appetite for dedicated climate-health funding.

Of the submissions received, 98 proposals advanced to independent technical review through a structured double-blind evaluation process. Each was assessed against clearly defined criteria encompassing scientific merit, relevance to regional priorities, potential for impact, team composition, gender and social inclusion, and budget feasibility. Following internal deliberations and a formal Evaluation Committee Meeting involving representatives from CHINNOVA, IDRC, and the programme’s Steering Committee, ten projects were selected for funding.

The funded cohort spans Sierra Leone, Senegal, Gabon, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Cameroon, Liberia, and The Gambia. No single country received more than one award in this first cycle, reflecting CHINNOVA’s deliberate commitment to equitable geographic representation and distributed capacity strengthening. The portfolio also mirrors the linguistic diversity of the sub-region.

The funded cohort brings together researchers from Green Scenery Sierra Leone; École Polytechnique de Thiès, Senegal; Université des Sciences et Techniques de Masuku, Gabon; the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana; Official University of Semuliki, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Water Resources Liberia; the Society for the Study of Women’s Health (SSWH), The Gambia; SODEXAM, Côte d’Ivoire; the Research Center for Global Health Action on Climate Change, Gender Equity, and Emerging Diseases (CHANGE), Benin; and the University of Bertoua/Osu Foundation, Cameroon.

Research Targeted at the Region’s Most Pressing Challenges

The ten funded projects collectively address some of the most urgent intersections between climate change and public health in West and Central Africa. Their research spans climate-sensitive disease surveillance, malaria early warning systems, mosquito-borne disease dynamics, heat stress and adaptation, digital health innovation, and community-centred resilience strategies, thematic areas chosen precisely because they sit at the sharpest edge of climate vulnerability in the sub-region, where the gap between available evidence and pressing need remains widest.

What distinguishes this cohort is not scientific quality alone, but a shared orientation toward evidence that is practical, policy-relevant, and directly applicable to the health systems and communities it is intended to serve. The projects have been designed to operate within the realities of resource-constrained environments, evolving public health risks, and the institutional contexts of their respective countries.

Implementation will be supported through CHINNOVA’s broader ecosystem of technical guidance, capacity strengthening, knowledge exchange, and collaborative learning, with the objective of not only generating research outputs, but building a connected regional network of institutions capable of translating sustained climate-health evidence into long-term policy and systems transformation.

A Platform for Regional Scientific Leadership

The significance of CFP1 extends well beyond its ten funded projects. The process itself has revealed a substantial and growing community of researchers and institutions across West and Central Africa actively investing in climate-health inquiry and increasingly capable of shaping research agendas rooted in the region’s own priorities, realities, and institutional strengths.

Information sessions and targeted outreach conducted during the call recorded particularly strong engagement from Francophone institutions, reinforcing that demand for regional research leadership cuts across both geographic and linguistic boundaries. This matters because long-term progress in addressing climate-health risks will require research ecosystems that are collaborative, distributed, and firmly grounded in local contexts, not concentrated in a handful of institutions or dependent on external agendas.

In this sense, CHINNOVA’s first grant cycle is as much a proof of concept as it is a funding mechanism: evidence that the sub-region has the capacity, the appetite, and the institutional infrastructure to lead its own climate-health research agenda.

Looking Ahead

As CHINNOVA prepares the funded projects for implementation, the programme is progressing through institutional due diligence, onboarding of funded teams, project kick-offs, and structured monitoring and knowledge-sharing activities across the cohort.

The initiative is also expanding its reach. Building on the momentum of the first cycle, CHINNOVA launched its Second Call for Proposals (CFP2) in March 2026, committing USD 1 million in large grants to further strengthen research and innovation at the intersection of climate change and health. Together, CFP1 and CFP2 represent a cumulative investment of USD 1.7 million in climate and health research capacity across West and Central Africa within a two-year period. The climate pressures reshaping public health across the continent will not abate. But through its expanding network of researchers, institutions, and partners, CHINNOVA is demonstrating that the sub-region need not wait for answers to arrive from elsewhere; it is building the capacity to generate them