Issued at the Close of the Culture of Science Conference 2026 — Nairobi, Kenya, 10 September 2026
The Coalition for Health Research and Development (CHReaD) convened the Culture of Science Conference 2026 in partnership with Speak Up Africa, Amref Health Africa, the Africa Health Research, Innovation and Development Alliance (AHRIDA) and the Faith to Action Network, from 8 to 10 September 2026 at the Ole Sereni Hotel, Nairobi. Under the theme “Shaping Africa’s Future through Science,” the Conference brought together policymakers, researchers, financiers, regulators, innovators, educators, youth, media practitioners, and civil society actors from across the continent.
The majority of African governments invest an average of 0.5 percent of GDP in research and development, against the 1 percent target set by the African Union’s Algiers Declaration. Only three countries currently meet the Abuja Declaration’s commitment of allocating 15 percent of national budgets to health. The African Medicines Agency is working toward harmonized regulatory review across the continent’s Regional Economic Communities. This describes a lived constraint on what Africans can research, innovate, manufacture, regulate, and trust.
Across three thematic days — financing and governing science, executing and innovating science, and embedding and sustaining science — the Culture of Science Conference examined the mechanisms required to close these gaps and called for ring-fenced domestic research budget lines, accelerated regulatory harmonization under the African Medicines Agency and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and expanded local manufacturing of medicines and diagnostics. Parallel sessions carried this same inquiry into education and the future health workforce, artificial intelligence in healthcare, faith and science in conversation, genomics, traditional and alternative medicines, and the leadership of communities, faith leaders, women and youth in shaping the continent’s science agenda.
Throughout, the Conference affirmed that science in Africa is not a distant technical enterprise but a public good, a cultural practice, and a determinant of sovereignty, embedded in how the continent governs, invests, communicates, and trusts.
Our commitment as CHReaD
We commit to advocating for accountable financing, an enabling regulatory environment, and advancing access to health products and technologies; to advancing evidence-based science and indigenous knowledge sharing on health research, development and innovation; and to advancing the Culture of Science agenda through our communities, partners and stakeholders.
Call to Action
- We call upon members of parliament to establish science and research caucuses nationally and regionally to advance the Culture of Science Agenda.
- On financing, CHReaD calls on national governments and Ministries of Finance to ring-fence a research and development budget line and raise domestic R&D spending to 1 percent of GDP, and to direct 15 percent of their annual budget to the health sector in line with the Abuja Declaration.
- We call upon African governments to establish coordination mechanisms for research, development and innovation.
- On regulation, CHReaD calls on AU Member States and the African Medicines Agency to complete operational integration of harmonized regulatory standards across all Regional Economic Communities by 2030, and on national governments to establish functional National Regulatory Authorities in all AU Member States, with at least 10 reaching WHO Maturity Level 3.
- On research, innovation, and access, CHReaD calls on pharmaceutical manufacturers, AUDA-NEPAD, and procurement partners to raise local production to 50 percent of Africa’s pharmaceutical needs and 25 percent local procurement of priority diagnostics and devices by 2030, and on Ministries of Education and institutions of higher learning to expand the research workforce toward 500 researchers per million population.
- African nations must urgently establish health-focused regulatory sandbox initiatives to pioneer agile, data-driven regulatory science, safely accelerating the deployment of AI, digital health and biotechnology innovations to transform healthcare delivery across the continent.
- On public trust, CHReaD calls on traditional and media institutions, science communicators, and its own Secretariat to sustain the science journalism engagement built through the conference on a monthly cadence from 2027 onward, rather than allow it to lapse into event-driven coverage.
- We call upon the private sector to establish and foster a coordinated mechanism that brings stakeholders, including philanthropists and foundations, together to align their investments in financing health research, development and innovation.
On behalf of the CHReaD Steering Committee,
Mary Muia-Mukhwana
Chair, CHReaD Steering Committee