TThe first round of RAN’s Youth Spark Innovation Grants (YSiG) identified 40 promising new ideas from youth across Africa. Following on the success of the first round, RAN is pleased to announce the second chapter of the Youth Spark Innovation grants, this time focusing on ‘Social innovations’ that leverage the power of humanities, social sciences, public health, law and economics to change society. The best projects will receive grants ranging from US$2,500 – $7,500 to develop their ideas to the next level of the innovation pipeline. This call will put particular focus on concepts, approaches, ideas, and technologies that leverage human social interactions and behaviour to solve social issues towards transformation of communities affected by recurrent shocks and stresses.
By leveraging creativity of students and the power of competition to drive innovation, the Youth Spark Innovation Grants – Social Innovation Chapter (YSiG-S) provides a great platform for students across all disciplines, but with particular focus on students of social sciences, humanities, public health, law and economics to use their creativity, passion and knowledge to create solutions in the form of social innovation approaches that will contribute to the resilience of RAN’s target communities to specific social challenges in a way that is scalable. The purpose of the social innovation focus is to stimulate participation from the social sciences, humanities, public health, law, statistics, population studies, and economics disciplines. We wish to support students’ ingenious attempts at developing promising ideas, approaches, or simple prototypes that will address key social issues derived from RAN’s resilience assessments, thereby contributing positive community change and strengthening resilience. Concepts may range from the feasible to the fanciful, as long as they propose a social innovation or an approach that builds on a social platform, pertinent to one or more of the stated resilience challenges in the communities.
Download the complete YSiG-S Document
YSiG-S Application Template
YSiG-S Frequently Asked Question
Applications will be accepted until February 15, 2017. Click here to apply now.
Brief Overview of ResilientAfrica Network (RAN)
The ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) funded by USAID is a partnership targeting 20 partner universities in 16 African countries. The main agenda of RAN is to strengthen resilience of communities vulnerable to shocks and stresses in Sub-Saharan Africa through university led-local African innovative solutions. ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) is led by Makerere University, with the secretariat at School of Public Health. It is one of eight university development labs under the Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN) of USAID’s Global Development Lab. RAN’s core partners are Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy (DRLA), Stanford University, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). RAN comprises four Resilience Innovation Labs (RILabs) each working with Partner Universities and focusing on different thematic areas as summarized in in the figure below

For more information and to apply, please visit grants.ranlab.org. Applicants may email any questions on the call or on any aspect of the application process to

