The ARUA Centre of Excellence for NCDs (ACE-NCD) is one of the thirteen ARUA Centres of Excellence. ACE-NCD hub is hosted by the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and is made up of five African Universities among them, the University of Nairobi, Makerere University in Uganda, the University of Ghana, the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. ACE-NCD comprises an international network of researchers across Africa and the rest of the World. ACE-NCD seeks to support research capacity building in the five partner African universities and the less research-intensive universities in Africa to address Africa’s complex burden of NCDs through collaborative trans-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research groups across Africa and beyond.

The ARUA Centre of Excellence for NCDs seeks to strengthen NCD training and research capacity building of young scholars spanning the medical and health sciences, public health, engineering, basic sciences, social sciences and humanities. In addition, the Centre will mount short courses, both face-to-face and online, focusing on broad NCD thematic areas; support research teams to secure research funding to enable them to undertake research and dissemination, and leverage on unique and collective strengths of its partners to become the focal point for NCD research in Africa.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 37 per cent of all deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2019 were from Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), a rise from 24 per cent in 2000. The rise in NCDs in Africa places a tremendous social and economic burden on communities. This occurs through increased absenteeism, job loss, unaffordable medical costs, increased responsibilities from family members for caregiving, and/or complete loss of income from the death of the breadwinner. The loss of income (partial or complete) pushes low-income households further into poverty.

Increased urbanization, rising poverty, weak health systems, weak policy guidelines, poor health-seeking behaviour and socio-cultural factors pose challenges for NCDs prevention, management, and control in sub-Saharan Africa. Complications arising from multi-morbidity, multiple chronic conditions and co-morbidity with infectious diseases create further challenges that affect men and women, young and old, and rural and urban populations disproportionately across different regions and countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this, there is a lack of reliable data on the epidemiological distribution and rising prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa. The rise of NCDs threatens to halt or roll back progress made in the health and development of sub-Saharan Africa, especially among adolescents and young people. The focus on NCDs is important given that Africa has the World’s youngest population, and a rapidly expanding adolescent and youth population, estimated at 360 million, with about 120 million or a third between 10-14 years.