Building sustainable neuroscience capacity in Africa: the role of non-profit organisations.

"Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests."

"TKK was funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC; http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/) grant number BB/J014532/1, through the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP). The authors acknowledge support from the Research Councils UK (RCUK) Block Grant at the University of Warwick for the payment of open access fee. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. In order to improve the public understanding of neuroscience in Africa, TReND in Africa volunteers have reached out to over 1000 people across Africa through outreach activities in countries such as Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria and Tanzania (Parslow ; Dunne ; Karikari et al. ; Muindi and Keller ). For example, as part of the Brain Awareness campaigns designed to promote societal awareness of brain health and diseases, these volunteers develop outreach activities targeted at pre-university students. Since neuroscience has not been sufficiently integrated into the school curricula in Africa, the primary goals of these school outreach activities have been to motivate learners in their studies, increase their understanding of specific scientific topics, and to introduce them to exciting scientific careers in neuroscience (Karikari et al. ). These events have been supported with educational resources kindly donated by The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. Moreover, to argue for the need to improve investments in tertiary-level science education in Africa, TReND in Africa volunteers have been involved in advocacy efforts aimed at convincing African governments to increase support for scientific research. For instance, the organisation had representation at IBRO’s Global Advocacy Symposium 2014 to argue for the need for improved governmental contribution to local research (Parslow ). Aside from TReND, another organisation supporting public education in neuroscience in Africa is KBNF. KBNF members do organise public outreach activities to empower the African public against preventable neurological disorders, such as spina bifida (KBNF )."