About the Foundation

AAF believes that health and hope can be restored in Africa. By investing in healthcare systems today, we address today’s needs, and prepare a new generation of African healthcare leaders for tomorrow’s challenges.

The AAF was born out of a unique partnership between senior North American academic physician-researchers in the field of infectious disease, their counterparts on the Faculty of Medicine at Uganda’s famed Makerere University, and others motivated to find an innovative solution to overcome the burden of infectious disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Their partnership became the Academic Alliance (AA) and established the Academic Alliance Foundation (AAF).

Today, AAF’s collaborative, African-based and African-led approach is producing sustainable results. We seek to strengthen and upgrade academic medical centers in sub-Saharan Africa, so they can educate and prepare a new generation of healthcare professionals, skilled in the best practices to lead a resurgent effort against infectious disease. Such centers, modeled upon the best academic medical centers in the world, will pioneer new and improved therapies and prevention strategies applicable to both rural and urban settings, while offering advanced treatment and care to those already afflicted.

The inaugural project of the AAF is the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Through the IDI, AAF is expanding healthcare capacity in sub-Saharan Africa and strengthening Makerere University.