The Gates Malaria Partnership: a consortium approach to malaria research and capacity development

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Abstract
Recently, there has been a major increase in financial support for malaria control. Most of these funds have, appropriately, been spent on the tools needed for effective prevention and treatment of malaria such as insecticide‐treated bed nets, indoor residual spraying and artemisinin combination therapy. There has been less investment in the training of the scientists from malaria‐endemic countries needed to support these large and increasingly complex malaria control programmes, especially in Africa. In 2000, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gates Malaria Partnership was established to support postgraduate training of African scientists wishing to pursue a career in malaria research. The programme had three research capacity development components: a PhD fellowship programme, a postdoctoral fellowship programme and a laboratory infrastructure programme. During an 8‐year period, 36 African PhD students and six postdoctoral fellows were supported, and two research laboratories were built in Tanzania. Some of the lessons learnt during this project – such as the need to improve PhD supervision in African universities and to provide better support for postdoctoral fellows – are now being applied to a successor malaria research capacity development programme, the Malaria Capacity Development Consortium, and may be of interest to other groups involved in improving postgraduate training in health sciences in African universities.