The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) is a leading Africa-based, African-led, international research institution headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. APHRC conducts policy-relevant research on population, health, education, urbanization, and related development issues in sub-Saharan Africa. Our vision is to transform African lives through research and we highly engage in evidence generation, strengthening research and related capacity in the African R&D ecosystem, and informing policy to action on health and development. Informed by global and continental development priorities, APHRC’s teams orient their research agendas, driven by the belief that Africa and African-generated evidence must be at the forefront of decisions supporting improved growth and development. Key to the Centre’s strength as a collaborator as well as an independent evidence generator is its commitment to excellence in the design and implementation of projects.

The center carries out its work through four critical thematic areas: Health and Wellbeing, Human Development, Population Dynamics and Urbanization and Data Science and Evaluation. Within these thematic areas, advancing the science of mental health in Africa is one of APHRC’s strategic objectives. The mental health strategic vision 2020- 2026 aims to transform the mental health ecosystem in Africa, and understand the trajectory and resolution of mental health conditions through capacity-building programs, evidence based multi-level strategies, and evidence generation, sharing and consensus building on the diagnosis, treatment of mental health conditions and timely delivery of mental health services and care in Africa.

The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) together with our partner, Wellcome, aims to drive a transformative change in areas related to anxiety, depression and psychosis. This Data Prize initiative aims to attract a critical mass of diverse African participants, who will subsequently be invited to participate in multidisciplinary projects to understand and to develop new solutions that can address mental health condition such as anxiety, depression, and psychosis and the related role of data or evidence in the process. The project aims to understand what works in preventing, treating and managing anxiety, depression and psychosis and to drive a transformative change in the African context in ways prioritized by the people who experience these problems.

We encourage mental health researchers and scientists across Africa to use existing data to answer mental health-related research questions linked to anxiety, depression and psychosis, and to improve understanding of its trajectory within African contexts. A multidisciplinary approach including data science and implementation science research will be supported to accelerate the implementation of more targeted and sustainable mental health research and interventions to (1) understand the complex systems, including social and structural determinants of mental health and identify more targeted mental health conditions prevention, treatment, and care interventions and implementation strategies; (2) to evaluate the implementation of data-driven insights ; (3) integrate meaningful engagement of community and implementing partners at every stage of the research.

The goal of the Mental Health Data Prize Africa is to produce tangible and scalable outputs or solutions that support mental health research and generate data-driven insights/evidence tailored to the needs and priorities of the African population, while building data capacity on the continent. To this effect, the specific objectives for the Mental Health Data Prize Africa call are:

around anxiety, depression and psychosis in Africa through a collaborative approach.

The APHRC will play a primary role in the data prize through execution of the following major activities.

APHRC’s mental health data prize project aims to build a more diverse and inclusive mental health science community, underpinned by a shared focus on finding new solutions. Therefore, we highly encourage and value the followings:

Collaboration  –We highly encourage interdisciplinary research design to mental health science and solutions. Any research designed by bringing researchers from different disciplines to collaborate on the same issue ultimately contributes to our understanding of the mental health conditions in Africa.

Inclusivity and representation –Given the geographic diversity of the African region, researchers from all regions will be adequately represented to help make mental health science more diverse and inclusive.

Involvement key stakeholders such as people with lived experience – We strongly value involvement of community engagement especially those who seek input from people with lived experience of mental health problems.

Transparency:The objectives, criteria, judging process, and funding allocation will be transparent. All communications and ongoing activities within this mental health data prize will be public, selection panel and criteria are designed to be objective and managed in accordance with this guideline.

Respect-We create an environment of respect based on trust, confidence, and excellence by fostering cooperation and consideration of diverse perspectives. Respect is our duty to show a high regard for ourselves, others, and the resources entrusted to us.

Fairness.We believe our decisions are impartial and objective. Our conduct must be free from competing self-interest, prejudice, and favoritism. We constantly reexamine our impartiality and objectivity, taking corrective action as appropriate.

Honesty:We earnestly seek to understand the truth and we encourage truthful, timely and accurate communications and conduct.

Responsiveness:We value strong and timely communication with all interested applicants. We will understand scooping of existing datasets across the continents and facilitate access to these data sources

In addition, we also encourage prize participants to follow the following rules and principles

The detail descriptions of the RFP, the scope of the work, thematic areas, eligibility and evaluation criteria, review process, selection panel and notification of the award procedure will be communicated very soon.