Partnerships
Partnerships are the lifeblood of Grand Challenges. We engage advocates, funders, policymakers, scientists, and science institutions around the world to build a collaborative, creative approach to health and development R&D.
A Global Network of Initiatives
The Grand Challenges network is itself a partnership. We bring together independent innovation initiatives that fund science projects on four continents. Each initiative, in turn, is a complex partnership of funders, scientists, and policymakers in a particular geography. Together, the initiatives amount to a super-partnership - we work in concert to pursue equity in health and development everywhere. In this way, the Grand Challenges network simultaneously gets the advantage of hyper-local perspectives and truly global scale. There are currently Grand Challenges partners operating in Brazil, Canada, China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, pan-Africa, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, South Africa, and the United States. The initiatives issue their own calls for proposals based on their own strategies, and they work together when appropriate to issue joint calls on shared priorities like Equitable AI Use.
Women and newborn babies are cared for at Ekwendeni Mission Hospital, in the Mzimba District, Malawi.
Transformational, Not Transactional
We draw from a diverse community of partners assembled over 20-plus years to create unique collaborations that can respond to specific opportunities. In health and development, partnerships built to achieve a single purpose can dissolve as soon as that purpose is achieved. Our partnerships, however, are based on decades of community-building and a tradition of trust. When there is business to transact, the right configuration of partners work together to get it done. The entire community is continuously engaged in a shared project, exchanging information, generating ideas, and co-developing strategies for impact.
Innovative Collaborations
Increasingly, we are focusing on supporting the R&D ecosystem in LMICs, so that the innovations we fund move smoothly from idea through the development process and finally to delivery in communities and health facilities. As a result, we are also testing new approaches to fostering innovation. In 2023, for example, Grand Challenges supported the launch of the Grand Challenges-Africa Drug Discovery Accelerator (GC-ADDA), a new model for drug discovery on the continent. GC-ADDA is headquartered at H3D at the University of Cape Town, and takes a decentralized approach to drug development, combining capacity that exists in multiple countries to deliver on cutting-edge drug discovery projects. In 2026, in partnership with the African Diaspora Network, Grand Challenges funded the Grand Challenges-African Diaspora Engagement Accelerator to catalyze collaborations between scientists on the continent and African scientists located in other countries, especially in the private sector. Overall, our goal is to mobilize as many partners as possible to create effective coalitions that drive sustainable change.
We continue to monitor the landscape for opportunities that our unique blend of partners can address together - and we are always on the lookout for new partners who share our goals and values.
