MURDER COVID-19 in Africa - Multifaceted Response Development from Research on COVID-19 in Africa

Project Abstract The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the global economy, with nearly 7.7 million confirmed cases and over 427,000 deaths by mid-June, 2020. In Africa, over 167,000 cases have been reported and around 4,000 of these have died as of June 14. Containing and mitigating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic require a comprehensive policy response that incorporates health and economic considerations. Developing such responses will benefit from adopting an evidence-based approach. Given the urgency of the situation, sound evidence needs to be accumulated as quickly as possible, to fill existing knowledge gaps and inform appropriate responses. As the evidence is accumulated, a pathway to research uptake and impact needs to be developed. Against this background, the Nigerian Young Academy (NYA) proposes a multifaceted and sustainable science advisory project to bridge the science-policy gap in Africa especially in relation to COVID-19. The project focuses on gathering and documenting state-of-the-art research evidence and policy messages, and communicating these to the policymaking community and the general public in Africa. In addition, the project will facilitate the emergence of an information sharing network to boost response capabilities to diseases now and in future. The project activities will concentrate on Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroun and Senegal - each of which has a young academy of scientists - together accounting for 24% of all confirmed cases and 19% of all deaths in Africa as of June 14, 2020. Expected Outputs a. Infographics and policy briefs to be distributed to all relevant stakeholders via print and electronic means. b. Videos of all webinars: to be openly available on YouTube and Facebook. c. Two (2) technical reports (monographs) that summarise the key scientific and policy lessons as well as action points, one for all webinars and another one for the physical events. d. Quarterly NYA Newsletter will feature project activities and bear relevant information. e. Articles in high-impact outlets such as The Conversation, GlobalDev, HealthWatch, Scientific African, among others, to serve the purpose of informing and educating the general public. f. Online database of scientific equipment to be highlighted in all tangible output.