History: The Africa Centre for Systematic Reviews & Knowledge Translation, “Africa Centre” was founded in March 2013 with support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The Principal Investigator for this grant was Prof. Nelson K. Sewankambo and Dr. Ekwaro A. Obuku the founding coordinator at the Centre. The aim of the Africa Centre is to build capacity for knowledge translation for public policy in Africa cutting across health, education and food security.
Vision of the Africa Centre: A leading Centre of excellence in evidence synthesis and knowledge translation for public policy in sub-Saharan Africa.
Mission of the Africa Centre: To transform Africa into an environment that is driven by evidence informed public policy and action and one that is self-reliant in capacity for evidence synthesis and knowledge translation.
Scope: Our reach has been throughout Africa including Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan in Eastern Africa; Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria in West Africa; South Africa and Zambia in Southern Africa. Although we initially started with health policy and systems work, we have since supported cross cutting teams in agriculture, engineering and education particularly in methodological approaches to evidence synthesis and knowledge translation. We are part of the Africa Evidence Network (www.africaevidencenetwork.org/) with various collaborations with the Campbell Collaboration (https://campbellcollaboration.org/)and the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (www.iced-eval.org/)
Building sustainable capacity for conducting and using evidence in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). We support teams through skills building workshops or trainings, policy dialogues, public lectures, presentations to decision makers and conferences on linking evidence to public policy. We have produced various systematic reviews, rapid responses and evidence briefs for policy captured in our health systems portal.
