Background:
Mathematical and statistical modeling are valuable tools for informing programmatic decision making and policy making in public health, supporting activities from estimating disease burden and tracking transmission dynamics to evaluating the potential impact of interventions and guiding outbreak response. In Africa, these approaches play a vital role in enabling data-informed prioritization of limited resources, long-term health planning, and timely action during health emergencies. Artificial intelligence (AI) is opening new possibilities for the application of modeling in public health. Building on years of machine learning use within the modeling community, recent AI advances can transform how data are prepared, analyzed, and communicated—integrating diverse and fragmented data sources, automating routine processes, and unlocking insights from complex datasets. This potential is particularly important in high-disease-burden, resource-constrained settings, where AI has the potential to lower barriers for non-expert users of analytic and modeling methods, accelerate the path from data to decision, and strengthen the ability of public health systems to respond effectively to emerging threats.

Opportunity:
This RFP seeks to fund partnerships, innovative methods, and tools that apply AI in transformative ways to address high-priority, real-world challenges in disease modeling for the African context. Building on priorities identified during the August 2025 “AI for Disease Modeling Convening”, opportunities include but are not limited to:

• Integrating diverse surveillance data—bringing together structured and unstructured data sources (such as genomics, wastewater surveillance, serosurveillance, climate, mobility, clinical, and epidemiological data) to enable greater combined insights to inform public health decisions and planning for risk prediction, burden of disease estimation, or outbreak detection and response.
• Use of AI to apply discrete disease models to routine surveillance data for endemic and/or outbreak-prone diseases, linking model outputs to public health guidance and producing AI-enabled decision support tools for intervention optimization, such as vaccine distribution.
• Developing decision-support tools for ministries of health on resource allocation based on burden of disease and population health needs—creating accessible AI-driven platforms that leverage modeling to integrate health, population, financial, intervention, and logistical data to generate scenario options.
• Building AI tutors for modeling training—offering multilingual, customizable training and simulation tools to strengthen modeling skills and increase accessibility.
• Lowering barriers for non-technical users—designing AI-enabled interfaces and tools that allow frontline staff to run and interpret models, paired with governance and validation mechanisms to ensure trust.

By funding collaborative approaches that unite innovators, modeling experts, and public health practitioners and decision-makers, this initiative aims to unlock AI’s transformative potential—reducing time to actionable insight, improving intervention targeting, and strengthening Africa’s ability to respond rapidly and effectively to public health threats.

This RFP will fund projects that are responsive to the public health needs and requests from ministries of health, national public health institutes, or other health authorities. These groups must be represented in the proposal design and project implementation to ensure alignment of proposed modelling innovations with national priorities, embedding solutions in decision-making, and shorten the runway from innovation to uptake - assuring faster translation, sustained adoption, and real-world public health impact.

Projects focused on gaining intelligence and insight into how to more precisely identify and design high impact use-cases will also be considered. This includes evaluation of costs and resource needs for countries to adapt, adopt, and maintain AI innovations for their disease modeling public health needs. Given the fastmoving nature of AI innovation, projects funded by this RFP are limited to 2 year duration.

Funding Criteria:

Applications must have attended the “AI for Disease Modeling Convening”. Meeting participants are welcome to include co-PIs and collaborators who were not in attendance; please share individuals’ full name(s) and email address(es) with <[email protected]> so they can be granted access.

We will consider funding for:

• Proposals with the lead Principal Investigator based in an African Institution are highly preferred. At minimum, a co-PI must be based at an African Institution.
• The proposal must have official support from an African public health institution, such as the ministry of health, national public health institute, or government research center. This support should be demonstrated either with a co-PI from one of these bodies or a letter of endorsement requesting that the project would be helpful for the country’s public health decision making.

We will NOT consider funding proposals that:

• Do not directly address the core objectives of this RFP
• Are not a clear, direct application of AI to disease modeling.
• Are not led by a convening attendee or by a team with clear, substantive involvement of convening participants.
• Have no demonstrated collaboration with a public health institution or do not include a clear plan to engage them.
• Do not show a credible pathway to impact for public health decision-making in Africa.
• Primary data collection is not supported by this RFP
• Cannot be reasonably accomplished within the proposed project duration (2 years)
• Do not demonstrate a clear commitment to responsible data governance and, where possible, to sharing results, processes, or tools for broader benefit.

Evaluation Criteria:

Proposals will be reviewed in a three-stage process, with all submissions due by the stated deadline. Stage 1 requires the submission of proposals as detailed below. If your proposal Is shortlisted, reviewer comments will be shared for written response and an Interview might (to be decided by reviewers) be conducted in Stage 2. Thereafter, the finalist proposals will be invited to submit full proposals using funder templates for final review and approval processes. Funding Is not guaranteed until all 3 stages have been completed and a signed grant agreement is in place.

Submissions will be evaluated on the following criteria:

• Alignment with RFP objectives – Clear connection to the priority use-cases identified at the AI for Disease Modeling Convening (August 6–8, 2025, Dakar, Senegal) and to the goal of strengthening public health decision-making in the African context.
• Potential for transformative impact – Likelihood that the proposed work will significantly advance the application of AI in disease modeling and deliver measurable benefits to public health practice and policy.
• Innovation– Novelty balanced with practical implementation of the idea, method and approach.
• Feasibility - Clarity of a feasible, context-appropriate plan for design, testing, and implementation.
• End-user engagement – Evidence of meaningful collaboration with public health institutions, decision-makers, or other stakeholders from project inception through implementation.
• Capacity and partnerships – Demonstrated experience and capabilities of the principal investigator (PI), team, and institutional partners to deliver the work successfully.
• Sustainability and scalability – Potential for the project’s benefits, tools, or approaches to be sustained and/or scaled beyond the funding period.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion – Commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive project environment, including equitable roles for African institutions and local experts.
• Data stewardship – Clarity on data needs, plans for data access, and approach to responsible data governance, sharing, and security.

Successful proposals will:

• Directly respond to the priorities identified during the convening or by public health institutions thereafter.
• Propose solutions that are both innovative and practical for real-world application in Africa.
• Demonstrate strong partnerships that combine AI expertise with public health knowledge.
• Show a clear path to measurable outcomes and public health impact.
• Include a credible budget and timeline aligned with the proposed scope of work.

Activities and Timeline:

• 15 September 2025: RFP Open - proposal submission opens (Stage 1)
• 06 October 2025: RFP Closes - proposal submission deadline
• 27 October: Shortlist informed - reviewer comments sent to shortlist, In some cases, Interviews will be requested (Stage 2)
• 06 November: Responses deadline
• 17 November: Finalists invited to submit full proposals (Stage 3)
• 05 January: Full proposals deadline

Note: timeline is subject to change  

Notice: Review and Sharing of Proposals:

To maximize the potential for impact and collaboration, proposals submitted for this RFP may be shared with external reviewers, other funders, or partner organizations who have aligned interests in supporting the proposed work (e.g., with the intent of exploring co-funding opportunities). By submitting, applicants acknowledge that their proposal may be shared as a whole or in part with external parties.