The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is a non-aligned, non-political, not-for-profit pan African organisation. The AAS’ vision is to see transformed lives on the African continent through science. Our tripartite mandate is recognising excellence through the AAS’ highly prestigious fellowship and award schemes, providing advisory and think tank functions for shaping Africa’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) strategies and policies, and implementing key STI programmes addressing Africa’s developmental challenges through our agenda setting, funding and programme implementation platform, the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa’s (AESA’s)