Afya Moja

Health Technology: from capacity building to capacity strengthening

Afya Moja (in Swahili “One Health”) project will strengthen African capacities in health technologies design, assessment, maintenance, commercialization, and disposal. Following WHO definition, as health technology we intend any application of organised knowledge and skills to solve health problems. Following the “One Health” approach, the project will span across four interrelated Reference Use Cases (RUCs, see WP1):

• biomedical engineering,
• medicine and surgery,
• veterinary medicine and animal production,
• nutrition and agriculture.

while keeping Ethics and regulatory sciences at the core of all the activities (see WP2). According to UN best practices, the project promotes the shift from capacity building to capacity strengthening, highlighting that African scholars have capacities, which must not be ignored, but strengthened and aligned with EU ones.

Objectives and KPIs

The ambition will be reached achieving 4 objectives described in this session.

Objective 1 (O1): strengthen African universities’ capacity in participating in European projects.

African universities are eligible to a range of Horizon Europe calls. Yet, their participation is limited, and mainly focused on piloting clinical and pre-clinical research on local priorities (e.g., non-communicable diseases) or global health challenges (e.g., Infection Prevention and Control). We will foster their participation by strengthening African scholars’ training and experience in writing, reviewing, running, monitoring, and reporting projects, with formal training (WP3) and mentoring (WP4). With African scholars shadowing experienced PIs.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is the number of scholars involved.

Targets:

• >40 scholars form Africa will be trained and hosted.
• >3 affiliated members will be involved in the writing of Horizon Europe project proposals during this project.

Objective 2 (O2): support the creation of novel research-intensive teaching modules and programs in Africa.

Afya Moja will strength associated members experience in research-intensive teaching by:

• involving African lecturers in co-supervising student projects in Italian universities
• involving Italian lecturers in co-supervising student projects in African universities
• organising multidiscipline student projects with students from both Italian and African universities and co-supervised by teams of international supervisors (at least 1 from Italy and 1 from Africa), running across Italian and African universities

Syllabuses for research-intensive modules and programs suitable for African partners will be co-designed.

KPI [Target]: number of

• students involved in international projects [>100]
• lecturers involved in co-supervising of student projects [>40]
• students’ exchange among African and Italian universities [>200]
• syllabuses deployed [>4; at least 1 per RUC]

Objective 3 (O3): Short-term training programs.

At least 6 short-term trainings will be organised both in Italy and in Africa (see WP3):

• 2 plenaries (i.e., science and technologies for one health), and
• 4 on emerging specific topics.

Scientific and organising committees will be made of both Italian and African scholars. Afya Moja will support associate members’ participation to:

• these short-term programs.
• established National and International training programs organised by Italian universities and their partners (e.g., GNB Summer School^[1], UCBM AI Bootcamp in Cambridge^[2], UNINA Agritech Academy, Apple Developer Academy, Digita Academy)

KPI [Target]: numbers of

• students involved in training events in Italy [>80]
• African scholars involved in the organization and as lecturers the above training programmes [20]
• Afya Moja brief training programs organised in Italy or Africa [6]

Objective 4 (O4): Support the inclusion of African experts in writing of international norms (e.g., guidelines, standards, and policies) in Health Technologies and One Health, by involving them in initiatives coordinated by the Italian partners.

Many international norms are not applicable in LMICs^[3], with a huge impact on Africa health and prosperity, due to the lack of participation of Africans. Afya Moja partners lead few cooperation projects deploying international norms, in collaboration with NGOs (EAMBES, IFMBE, IUPESM, UBORA), the European Parliament and the WHO. Afya Moja associated members will be trained (shadowing and mentoring) and then involved in these initiatives (See WP5).

^[1] https://www.grupponazionalebioingegneria.it/gnbevent-type/gnb-school/

^[2] https://www.unicampus.it/corsi/bootcamp-overview/

^[3] “The inadequacy of regulatory frameworks in time of crisis and in low-resource settings: personal protective equipment and COVID-19.” Health and Technology 10.6 (2020): 1375-1383. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-020-00429-2

KPI [Target]: number of:

• Affiliated members’ scholars involved in writing international docu ments in collaboration with NGOs and policymakers [>10]
• documents co-authored by Afya Moja partners [>2]