AREF Excell Malaria Researcher & Leadership Development Programme

📝 About the Programme

The AREF Excell Malaria Researcher & Leadership Development Programme invites applications from high-achieving malaria researchers to be considered by their institutions for nomination.

AREF's Mission: To support a community of health researchers across Africa by cultivating their knowledge and skills to become research leaders who can tackle African and global health challenges. The programme aims to equip African post-doctoral malaria researchers with the leadership skills needed to progress and lead malaria research throughout their careers.

The programme will enable 18 individual researchers from three participating institutions to:

• Build strong research careers.
• Empower excellent teams.
• Win research funds.
• Work collaboratively.
• Engage with research users to make a significant impact on improving health and saving lives.

Additionally, partner institutions will receive up to $50,000 USD over two years to support capacity-building projects.

🎯 Programme Themes

The Excell Programme focuses on five key learning themes:

1. The Researcher as Leader
2. The Effective Researcher
3. The Compelling Applicant
4. The Researcher as Manager
5. The Responsible Researcher

📅 Programme Timeline (January 2026 – January 2028)

The programme includes:

• Opening and closing conferences.
• Project funding of up to $50,000 USD to embed policy and practice.
• Three experiential workshops.
• Coaching and mentorship for institutional leads.
• Supplementary webinars and online resources.
• Monitoring and evaluation of projects, including baseline and end-of-programme assessments.
• Collaborative projects and networking opportunities.

🎁 Benefits

The Excell Malaria Programme offers the following benefits:

• Intensive developmental support for five nominated "rising stars" from your institution.
• Opportunity to cascade learning through other institutional programmes.
• Cooperation and networking between participating institutions, sharing experiences and best practices.
• Capacity-strengthening projects involving institutional leads and nominees, supported by AREF funding of up to $50,000 USD per institution.
• Enhanced success in winning research funds and conducting impactful research.

Institutions applying for the award must describe how they will implement these opportunities and how the programme will advance their malaria research capacity.

✅ Eligibility Criteria

To qualify for the programme, applicants must:

• Be an employee of an African institution with a significant role in malaria research.
• Be a national of an African state.
• Have 2–8 years of active post-PhD research experience, or for clinicians without a PhD, hold both an MD and a research master’s degree with 4–8 years of active research experience.
• Not have participated in a previous Excell programme.
• Focus on malaria research using approaches such as laboratory, clinical, behavioral, social, public health, health systems, environmental, or mathematical sciences. Research must aim for better health outcomes in Africa and align with national malaria research strategies, where applicable.

📜 Application Process

• Each application will be led by an Institutional Lead (IL), ideally a mid-to-senior level malaria researcher.
• The IL will coordinate the competitive selection of five talented early-career malaria researchers (nominees) to participate in the programme.
• The application process, including the competitive nomination of nominees, is estimated to take 6–8 weeks. Interested applicants are encouraged to start early.

For more details on how to apply, refer to the official application guide.

📅 Key Dates

• Date Published: June 10, 2025
• Application Deadline: October 15, 2025

🌐 Contact and Application Portal

• Sponsor Organisation: Africa Research Excellence Fund (AREF)
• Application Portal: AREF Excell Malaria Programme 2025
• Apply Here: AREF Application Portal

This programme is a unique opportunity for African malaria researchers to advance their careers, strengthen institutional capacity, and contribute to impactful health research. Start your application today!

• Intensive developmental support for five nominated “rising stars” from your institution.
• The opportunity to cascade their learning through your other institutional programmes.
• Cooperation and networking between participating institutions, sharing your experience and best practice – and engaging with other networks.
• An Excell enabled capacity strengthening project involving your institutional lead and Excell nominees (researchers), focused on an aspect of local transformation within your bigger set of plans, supported by AREF funding up to 50,000 USD per institution.
• Feed-through into greater success at winning funds and to research with greater impact.