Four open calls right now offer African researchers, innovators, and young leaders a combined total of more than $12 million in funding, though it’s worth being clear upfront that the vast majority of that figure sits inside one large, multi-award research call rather than a single grant. Here’s what’s actually available and how to apply, organized by deadline.
ACET Young Leaders in Research (YLR) Grant
Award: up to $15,000 USD Deadline: September 7, 2026
This grant targets young researchers and leaders working on research with real relevance to Africa’s development priorities, offering direct funding to support individual or small-scale research work rather than requiring a large multi-country consortium.
Apply: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=bc1FYvce2kybUCpqQ9NBAfdT0K9w1N1DguRGpTxOJXhUNUNRVUVDWjkzVzVPRkxCMTM4N1BSR0FHNi4u
Africa Energy Innovation Challenge (AEIC)
Award: $10,000 USD Deadline: September 10, 2026
Run to identify and back promising energy innovation solutions from across the continent, this challenge is aimed at innovators developing practical answers to Africa’s energy access and reliability gaps.
Apply: https://thenef.org/aeic/
AU-EU Youth Action Lab Innovation Grants
Award: €42,000 EUR Deadline: September 23, 2026
A joint African Union and European Union initiative supporting youth-led innovation projects, offering one of the larger individual grant amounts on this list to young innovators building solutions with cross-continental relevance.
Apply: https://aueuyouth.com/innovation-grants/
SGCI STISA 2034 Multilateral Research Call
Award: approximately $12 million USD in total, distributed as research grants to African-led research consortia Deadline: September 25, 2026, at 23:59 EDT (expression of interest deadline)
This is the call actually responsible for the bulk of the combined total above, and it works differently from the other three. Rather than a single prize, the Science Granting Councils Initiative is distributing roughly $12 million across multiple African-led research consortia working on one of five priority areas aligned with the African Union’s Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2034: agriculture, health, energy, environment, and artificial intelligence and digital technologies. Eligible applicants need to form a consortium of at least three institutions drawn from at least three SGCI member countries, with up to five co-applicant institutions from five countries allowed, and approved projects can run for up to 36 months. The call is backed by African Science Granting Councils alongside Canada’s IDRC, the Government of Norway, the UK’s FCDO, and Wellcome. Given the consortium-building requirement, researchers interested in this one should treat September 25 as a hard deadline for having partnerships already in place, not a date to start looking for collaborators.
Apply: https://call.sgci.africa/
Why the Total Is Worth Reading Carefully
Adding these four opportunities together gets you past $12 million, but that number is doing most of its work through the SGCI call alone, which funds multiple research teams rather than a single winner. The other three, ACET’s $15,000, AEIC’s $10,000, and the AU-EU Youth Action Lab’s €42,000, are individually smaller but considerably more accessible for a single researcher or small team applying without needing to first assemble a multi-country consortium. Which of these is worth your time depends entirely on what you’re building: a solo or small-team research project fits the first three, while a genuinely multi-country research collaboration on agriculture, health, energy, environment, or AI is exactly what the SGCI call is designed to fund.
