Uganda to Launch ACT-PREP, Africa’s New Epidemic Preparedness Research Network

When the next infectious disease outbreak strikes, the question for African researchers should not be whether they have the capacity to conduct the research, but how quickly they can begin.

That is the gap a new five-year research initiative, Advancing Clinical Trials and Epidemic Preparedness Research Capacity in Africa (ACT-PREP), is seeking to address.

The project will be officially launched in Uganda on September 28^th, 2026, bringing together researchers and partners from universities and research institutions across Africa and Europe. The launch will be held at the Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) Auditorium in Kampala.

Led by Makerere University School of Public Health, ACT-PREP is designed to strengthen Africa’s ability to conduct clinical trials and other research before and during infectious disease outbreaks.

Africa has repeatedly faced epidemics of diseases such as Marburg, Ebola, COVID-19 and other emerging infections. Yet when outbreaks occur, the capacity to quickly generate the evidence needed to guide treatment, prevention and public health decisions remains underdeveloped.

ACT-PREP aims to make research part of outbreak preparedness not something that begins only after an epidemic has already spread.

According to Prof Rhoda Wanyenze, the Principal Investigator on the project, “the initiative will establish a framework for more equitable collaboration among 10 African and two European institutions, working alongside Universities and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC)”.

The consortium includes institutions from Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan and Senegal, as well as European partners in Sweden and Germany. Africa CDC is also among the participating institutions.

For Uganda, the launch at Makerere University is significant. The university is taking the scientific lead on a programme that places African research institutions at the centre of efforts to prepare for future epidemics.

One of ACT-PREP’s central ambitions is to address the shortage of researchers and systems capable of rapidly conducting high-quality clinical research during emergencies.

The project will strengthen clinical research, ethics and regulatory capacity, while also supporting laboratory and disease surveillance systems. It will integrate training into PhD and postdoctoral programmes, with the consortium aiming to train at least 700 fellows at the end of the project.

“The idea is straightforward: Africa needs not only laboratories and equipment, but also people with the skills to use them when an outbreak begins” – Says Dr Steven Kabwama, ACT-PREP Project Manager.

Researchers will also be supported to share expertise, data, resources and technology across institutions and national borders.

ACT-PREP will further explore One Health approaches and artificial intelligence-supported systems to improve disease prediction, detection and rapid response. The project also seeks to support more streamlined regulatory processes so that clinical trials can be deployed and monitored more quickly when they are needed.

The experience of recent epidemics has shown that time is one of the most valuable resources in an outbreak.

Delays in detecting a pathogen, setting up research sites, securing ethical and regulatory approvals or generating reliable evidence can affect how quickly health authorities are able to respond.

ACT-PREP is built around the idea that many of these systems should already be in place before the next emergency.

That means having trained researchers, functioning laboratories, established regulatory pathways, surveillance systems and relationships between institutions that can be activated when an outbreak occurs.

It also means changing how research partnerships are built.

Rather than relying on external institutions to arrive when a crisis begins, the project seeks to strengthen African institutions themselves and create longer-term collaborations in which expertise, technology, data and resources can be shared across borders.