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Our Goal

Conduct research, build capacity and disseminate findings that will address the rising problem of NCDs in Sub-Saharan Africa and the region.

Our Mission

To become a vibrant, sustainable Centre of Excellence for NCD at the forefront of NCD research, capacity-building and policy-making support in Africa.

Our Vision

Develop scientific evidence required to inform NCDs policies; promote NCDs prevention, management, and control; and engage with communities.

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 Centre’s research areas are framed around three broad thematic areas.

  • Prevention – nutrition, substance abuse and mental health, indoor and outdoor air quality, hypertension, and policy development and communication; models of prevention and care.
  • Early Detection and Control – mechanistic research, multi-morbidity of chronic diseases and infection, bio-banking and biomarkers, with a focus on cancer, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), and chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs).
  • Big Data for Evidence-Based Decision Making – data and trend analysis for the risk factors using a life course approach, especially focusing on adolescents and youth.

In addition, cross-cutting research areas shall include -gender; education and mentorship; communication and research dissemination; engagement with the public and industry.

The overall objective of ACE-NCD is to develop and support NCD research and capacity-building training on NCDs prevention and management in Sub-Saharan Africa and guide NCDs policy formulation.
This objective will be achieved through four (4) specific objectives.

  • Objective 1: Development of continental multi-disciplinary research programmes
    The ACE-NCD will support securing of competitive grants to facilitate the formation of robust research teams among ACE-NCD faculty, enabling them to establish continental-wide research programmes around NCDs. The Centre will support multidisciplinary research and small pilot projects on cardiovascular diseases (CVD), cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes and co-morbidity with NCDs; mental health; socio-cultural and behavioural research. The Centre will also support the organisation and hosting of regional workshops, seminars and conferences to strengthen research teams and disseminate research findings.
  • Objective 2: Establishment of a training research and mobility programme
    Build research and human capacity in NCDs in Africa through the development of an NCD research and training mobility programme. The programme will include short study visits and stays (sandwich programmes, faculty, and student exchanges) at partner universities in Africa and around the world universities.
  • Objective 3: Development of an NCD research and data repository for Africa
    Establish and maintain an NCD one-stop data repository on ongoing continental-level NCD research. This will enable students, researchers, policymakers and practitioners across Africa to find ongoing projects within their own countries, request raw data for additional analysis and writing publications; identify opportunities for collaboration, and get information to guide NCD policies and programmes development.
  • Objective 4: Hold an annual International NCD Symposium
    This will enable NCD researchers of high international repute, promising research students, the private sector, industry, policy and academia to come together and discuss NCD health issues of relevance to Africa; and interact with universities outside Africa, African governments, industry and NGOs.

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.

Core team

Dr. Fred Bukachi, BSc, MBChB, MMed, MSc, Ph.D

Centre Director

Dr Anne Kamau, PhD

Deputy Director

Ms. Paschalin Basil, MA

Centre Manager