Ensuring equity in research funding
EDCTP is considering how best to achieve gender and regional equity in its activities and funding.
To ensure the excellence of the research it funds, EDCTP awards funding through competitive calls for proposals. However, this approach tends to favour those already in receipt of funding as well as senior academics, where women are markedly under-represented. As a result, individuals and institutions in countries with less well-developed health research systems, as well as female researchers, are often significantly disadvantaged.
An interim review of the EDCTP2 programme recommended that the organisation find ways to address geographic and gender-related imbalances in funding. A stakeholder meeting held in November 2019 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in partnership with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), proposed a range of measures that EDCTP, other funders and regional stakeholders could take to create a more level playing field. In addition, three EDCTP grant-writing workshops were held in Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire and Mozambique in 2018 and 2019, mainly targeting French and Portuguese-speaking aspiring and mid-career African scientists. A total of 96 African scientists participated.
EDCTP has also examined how gender-balanced its processes are. Across all its schemes, 63.7% of grant reviewers were male and 36.3% were female, numbers that have remained broadly stable over EDCTP2’s lifetime (2014–19). Women make up 37.7% of participants of scientific review committee meetings. Women also carried out 44.1% of ethics evaluations and made up 42.7% of ethics review panels.
EDCTP strives to achieve gender balance in its evaluation procedures, and gender (and geographic location) is considered when reviewers are selected. However, reviewers typically work in academia, where women hold just 24% of senior positions in the EU (equivalent figures are not available for sub-Saharan Africa but the region’s gender imbalance is likely to be at least as great).
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Scientific excellence is essential to research – unreliable research wastes resources and is potentially dangerous. Competitive calls for proposals and peer review are well-established mechanisms to assure scientific excellence.
However, one drawback of this approach is that disadvantaged groups may struggle to compete, and funding can become concentrated in centres that have been well funded in the past. This can lead to a potentially harmful lack of diversity, and missed opportunities for individuals and institutions with potential but limited experience to contribute to the research enterprise.
In November 2019, EDCTP and the Africa CDC organised a joint meeting at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss two specific aspects of equity in research – gender and regional.
Globally, women are under-represented in science, particularly at senior levels. With some notable exceptions, this is also true in sub-Saharan Africa. The workshop included presentations from senior and mid-career female researchers from sub-Saharan Africa, and discussed ways in which EDCTP and other stakeholders could level the playing field so that women are able to compete on an equal footing with men.
It was also suggested that gender should be considered in the design of research studies. A gender perspective could be an important influence on the design of an intervention, or how a trial is organised (for example, how participants are recruited or informed consent is obtained). By way of example, EDCTP’s BCA-WA-ETHICS project has been working to build capacity to consider gender-related issues in clinical research in countries in West Africa. BCA-WA-ETHICS developed a framework for the ethical evaluation of research protocols from a sex and gender perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic and other epidemics.
Discussions also focused on regional equity. Some countries in sub-Saharan Africa have received relatively little funding from EDCTP and participated in few studies. Furthermore, researchers from French- and Portuguese-speaking countries suggested that language barriers made it difficult to compete.
The two-day meeting generated a range of practical recommendations for EDCTP and other stakeholders on ways to address gender-related and regional inequities in research funding.
Equity in research
Female researchers in EDCTP grants (2014-2019)
Nevertheless, there are numerous examples of women who are playing leading roles in EDCTP projects. Dr Oumou Maïga-Ascofaré, for example, began her research career in Mali, before undertaking postgraduate training in Germany. Through a collaboration with a German institute, she was able to establish a research base in Ghana, and was the successful lead applicant on the ASAAP study, a collaboration involving five African and two EU countries that is investigating a new antimalarial combination treatment for children.
Other notable female researchers with EDCTP support include Professor Francine Ntoumi, coordinator of the CANTAM EDCTP regional Network of Excellence and the PANDORA-ID-NET epidemic preparedness network (and also a member of the EDCTP General Assembly), and Dr Cissy Kityo Mutuluza, Executive Director of the Joint Clinical Research Centre, Uganda. EDCTP funding has also provided opportunities for female researchers in Europe to lead major programmes of work, including Dr Julie Fox (coordinator of the CHAPS HIV prevention project) and Dr Kirsty Le Doare (coordinator of the PREPARE group B streptococcus vaccine study).
In addition, 37.7% of EDCTP fellows are women, including many who have achieved significant scientific recognition.
In November 2019, EDCTP organised a joint meeting with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to explore gender and regional equity in research.
Collaborating to improve gender-
related and regional disparities in
research funding
Participants of the EDCTP-Africa CDC workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia