Our partnership with EDCTP is included in our general framework of supporting networks and through these, to support the PALOP. The MoU provided a framework for our collaboration, while at the same time allows flexibility. Each year we analyse the achievements: what is going well, and what can be improved?

An important objective was to make sure that researchers from the PALOP could compete for EDCTP funding. When in 2015, the Foundation supported an EDCTP call for proposals towards strengthening ethics and regulatory capacity, there were no applications from the PALOP. We then have decided to dedicate support to a call in 2016, through which the ‘Biomedical ethics and regulatory capacity building partnership for Portuguese-speaking African countries’ (BERC-Luso) project was funded, covering all the PALOP. Through this project, legislation was prepared, and part of that has already been in process to be adopted by national governments. Through training, the human capacity for ethical and regulatory activities in PALOP has grown substantially. Another joint activity was Career Development Fellowships that enabled PALOP researchers to tap into EDCTP’s support.

A highlight of our collaboration was hosting the EDCTP Ninth Biennial Forum together with the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal from 17 to21 September 2018. This was the first Forum to be held in Portugal, where we looked back on the achievements to date and looked forward to the next EDCTP programme.

We intend to remain an active supporter and believe all sectors of society should participate in the gathering of knowledge and share in its benefits.

Before going into the conclusions and recommendations, I would like to note that since 2007, the Foundation has further structured its support to PALOP in health research. We knew that strengthening health research could be a catalyst for the science system consolidation in these countries. In 2007, we started the support of setting up an health research centre in Angola together with the Portuguese cooperation: the Centro de Investigação em Saúde de Angola (CISA). The centre is now created and fully operational, and it opens new opportunities to obtain other supports.

From that experience and the work done since then, we knew that the PALOP faced many challenges, but that there were also many opportunities. The PALOP often have limited national budgets for health research and therefore need to tap into international funds. However, these countries face several challenges in attracting funds and getting their projects approved. Therefore we have commissioned the MAPIS study, because we felt it could be useful for all partners to identify the challenges and to suggest recommendations in order to strengthen the health research that is carried out in these countries.

The study concluded that although PALOP’s scientific output has grown steeply in the last decade, their global share lags behind, accounting for only 0,034% of world scientific output. Almost 90% of the research is conducted with external partners, whereas less than 25% of the science is led by researchers from PALOP. Thus, there is room for growth in output as well as leadership. While there is much cooperation with international partners, there is limited interaction between the PALOP. Networking with European partners is often easier than networking among the PALOP or between the PALOP and other African countries. However, these countries face similar health challenges and can learn from each other. Our recommendations are manyfold, and can be summarised as followed:

Coordination between international funders and national agencies should be improved. The administrative burden of support for individual researchers is high, and support is often not aligned among the different funders We have to realise that researchers in the PALOP often don’t have a grants office and other support structures and have to organise everything by themselves.

Partnerships among the PALOP and with other African countries need to be strengthened as building local leadership takes time. If we invest in researchers’ careers, we build leaders that can set home-grown priorities and conduct the research needed. Scientific leadership is not something that can be commissioned.

Sustainability of support is another major area of improvement. Health research is not considered a basic service in many PALOP countries, and therefore support should be provided in a sustained way.  Support to research is less visible than for instance building an hospital and it requires long term perspective. When after a few years a project ends, support also ends. But the human and physical infrastructure needs to be sustained to be able to attract new funding and conduct high quality health research. This topic should be on the agenda whenever national governments and international funders meet.

At the Foundation we are looking for ways to enhance coordination and sustainability. Whenever we support scientific projects, we ask to allocate 15% of the grant towards strengthening institutional capacities. We also encourage communication. It is necessary to translate the scientific results into policy supporting government officials and decision making, so we dedicate part of our grants towards knowledge sharing. In this way we encourage sustainability.

One example of how coordination and sustainability works is the CISA. We have been supporting CISA for 14 years. Each phase of our collaboration was based on a specific collaboration agreement. We started by supporting a project to create a center, and over time we worked on transferring the capabilities to the Angolan authorities. Once the institute was fully operational, we agreed to continue to support ‘soft skills’ such as covering publications costs, providing grant application training and scholarships et cetera. We have now reached the phase where researchers from CISA are applying for competitive grants.

At the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation we support health research in the PALOP with two aims: to strengthen institutional capacity, and to encourage the development of scientific careers in these countries, particularly for young researchers. This is done by supporting scientific projects that include institutional capacity; and through grants to projects and to young researchers, to do short postdoc in scientific institutions in Portugal in order to prepare a scientific project and creating networks and after return to their national institutions, to start their own projects and their own research teams. We also have annual calls for scholarships for postgraduate students in health sciences.

In addition, we support training courses in ‘transversal skills’: science management, project management, grant writing, manuscript writing and publication, scientific communication, et cetera.

Other important activity at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is to promote networking among the PALOP to enhance their ability to tap into international networks such as EDCTP. We aim to promote access of the PALOP to these networks so they can be more competitive in the international science arena. In the future, we also aim to extend small grants to PALOP researchers to be able to use the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (IGC) facilities: the Gulbenkian institute dedicated to biological and biomedical research and innovative postgraduate training.