Description
ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) is the largest network of African universities for advancement of resilience of communities to recurrent shocks and stresses by leveraging science and technology to innovate transformative solutions. RAN’s Theory of Change states: “The resilience of people and systems in Africa will be strengthened by leveraging knowledge, scholarship and creativity to incubate, test, and scale innovations that target capabilities and reduce vulnerabilities identified by an evidenced-based resilience framework”. A non-profit platform, RAN a multi-country project headquartered at Makerere University School of Public Health was established in 2012. RAN brings together 20 universities across 13 countries in Africa as well as two US-based universities: George Washington University which supports RAN on resilience framework development and operationalization while Stanford University provides support in innovation process development.
Functionally, RAN universities are clustered around four regional Resilience Innovation Labs (RILabs), our centres for sourcing and incubating innovations. The Eastern Africa RILab is led by Makerere, Southern Africa RILab by the University of Pretoria, West Africa RILab by the University for Development Studies, Ghana and the Horn of Africa RILab by Jimma University, Ethiopia. Each RILab is semi-autonomous and hosts a sub-network of 3-5 universities and has an established physical innovation space. To-date, RAN has supported and is incubating over 200 Innovative Solutions directed towards positively impacting the communities we serve and live in. Details about these Innovations and RAN at large are shared on www.ranlab.org, Twitter -@AfricaResilient, Facebook-Resilient Africa Network.