About APHRC

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. APHRC's vision is to transform African lives through research. To achieve this, the Center prioritize evidence generation, strengthening research and related capacity in the African R&D ecosystem, and informing policy to action on health and development. APHRC's  work is organized arround four thematic areas: Health and Wellbeing, Human Development, Population Dynamics and Urbanization and Data Science and Evaluation. Within these areas, advancing the science of mental health in Africa is a strategic priority. APHRC’s Mental Health Strategic Vision (2020–2026) seeks to transform the mental health ecosystem in Africa by strengthening capacity, generating and synthesizing evidence, promoting consensus on diagnosis and treatment, and supporting the timely delivery of effective and equitable mental health services across the continent.

About Mental Health Data Prize Africa

The African Population and Health Research Center, in partnership with Wellcome, is implementing the Mental Health Data Prize Africa to catalyze transformative change in the understanding and management of anxiety, depression, and psychosis in African contexts.  This initiative aims to attract a critical mass of diverse African participants who will be supported to engage in multidisciplinary, data-driven research projects. These projects will focus on developing innovative solutions to mental health challenges and advancing understanding of what works in preventing, treating, and managing anxiety, depression, and psychosis. Central to the Prize is a commitment to ensuring that solutions are grounded in African priorities and informed by the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.

The Mental Health Data Prize Africa encourages mental health researchers, data scientists, and related experts across Africa to leverage existing datasets and or develop new solutions to address key research questions on mental health conditions and their trajectories within African settings. A strong emphasis is placed on multidisciplinary collaboration—including data scientist , epidemiologist, MH experts, clinical psychatrists, private sectors, policymakers, lived experience experts and implementation science—to accelerate the development and uptake of targeted, sustainable interventions.

The overarching goal of the Mental Health Data Prize Africa is to generate tangible, scalable outputs that advance mental health research and produce actionable, data-driven insights tailored to the needs and priorities of African populations, while simultaneously strengthening data science capacity on the continent. Specifically, supported projects will aim to:

1. Improve understanding of complex systems and social and structural determinants of mental health, and identify more effective prevention, treatment, and care strategies.

2. Evaluate the implementation and impact of data-driven insights and or develop new digital solutions that can improve our understanding of the three mental health conditions (Depression, anxiety and psychosis) in Africa.

3. Encourage or facilitate engagement of lived experience experts and key partners throughout the research and development lifecycle.

Specific Objectives

The MHDP Africa seeks to:

• Support trustworthy, collaborative data science approaches to address challenges related to anxiety, depression, and psychosis in Africa.

• Generate scalable, data-driven tools and outputs that enhance understanding of mental health and inform effective interventions in African contexts.

• Produce evidence to improve mental health diagnosis, treatment, and care, and to support decision-making by clinicians, frontline health workers, and policymakers.

Landscape of Mental Health Research and Datasets in Africa 

APHRC has conducted a scoping review of mental health research and datasets across Africa to map the scope and types of research and development activities undertaken on the continent. The detail methods and potential MH research lists and datasets will be published soon. The review assesses the availability of relevant data, describe potential access to data sources with some background information about design, measurements, target group under studied, location, and modeling approaches. APHRC will also provide targeted support to interested researchers in hypothesis generation, research and development design, and the initiation of engagement and communication with data owners. This platform, in addition to the publications,  aim to populate existing MH research and datasets across the continent. For further information, please visit EXPLORE section and see the lists in map and list views.