SGP VIII is a research grant from ARNTD and COR-NTD for African researchers working on neglected tropical diseases like trachoma, schistosomiasis, and leprosy. Early-career researchers can get up to $30,000 (four awards), mid-career researchers who’ve completed a past SGP grant can get up to $65,000 (two awards). Deadline is August 24, 2026, 5pm GMT. You must submit ARNTD’s own budget template or your application gets rejected automatically. Apply at arntd.org.
If you’re a researcher in Africa and you work on diseases like trachoma, schistosomiasis, or leprosy, this one is for you. The African Research Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, everybody just calls it ARNTD, has opened the eighth round of its Small Grants Program. People are calling it SGP VIII. It’s a research grant, not a scholarship, so this one is for people already doing science, not students looking for tuition money.
Applications opened July 24, 2026. They close August 24, 2026, by 5pm GMT. That’s less than a month from now, so don’t sit on this one too long.
What this SGP VIII grant is for
ARNTD works with a group called the Coalition for Operational Research on Neglected Tropical Diseases, shortened as COR-NTD. Together they’re funding research that helps African countries fight neglected tropical diseases, NTDs for short. Money for this round is coming from the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, through something they call the Global Research and Technology Development portfolio.
Now, what kind of research are they after? Not lab research where you’re mixing chemicals. This is what they call implementation research. In plain terms, it means studying how disease programs are actually run on the ground, and finding out what’s working and what’s not, so the programs can be fixed and improved. Say a state is running a drug distribution exercise for a disease and people keep missing out on treatment. Implementation research would dig into why that’s happening and test out a fix.
The diseases this round is focused on are trachoma, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, and visceral leishmaniasis. If your research area isn’t one of these six, this particular call probably isn’t for you.
The two grant types, and who each one is for
SGP VIII has two separate funding tracks, and a lot of people mix them up.
The first is the Early-Career Grant. This one pays up to $30,000, and there are only four of these awards to go around across the whole of Africa. It’s meant for researchers still building their careers: people with a master’s degree and some research background, PhD students, people who finished their PhD within the last five years, or clinicians with specialist training. If you already hold the rank of Associate Professor or something higher, you don’t qualify for this track, no matter how early your NTD research career is.
The second is the Mid-Career Grant, and this one pays up to $65,000, with two awards available. Here’s the part people get wrong: this track isn’t open to everybody. It’s only for researchers who already received an SGP grant in an earlier round, from SGP I all the way to SGP VI, and completed that project well. So if this would be your first ever SGP application, you’re looking at the Early-Career track, not this one.
Career breaks for health reasons or family responsibilities won’t count against you either way. ARNTD says clearly that the five-year window for PhD graduates gets adjusted if you had a break like that.
Who can apply for the early-career track
To go for the $30,000 Early-Career Grant, you need to tick these boxes:
You must be based at a research institution or university somewhere in Africa, and your work has to connect to your country’s NTD program. You’ll also need a senior NTD researcher willing to mentor you and put that commitment in writing, ARNTD calls this person your “research quality guarantor.” Without that letter, your application won’t even get reviewed.
One more thing that trips people up. You can’t have previously completed an SGP grant as the lead researcher, and you can’t have already won a research grant worth $100,000 or more. That’s the whole point of the early-career track, it’s for people who haven’t had that kind of funding yet.
What the money can’t be used for
This part matters because a lot of applicants assume grant money covers everything. It doesn’t. SGP VIII funding cannot pay salaries, cover conference or meeting costs, pay tuition, or buy things like vehicles, pesticides, or pharmaceuticals. It also can’t fund routine program activities that are already supposed to be happening anyway, things like mass drug administration exercises, coverage surveys, or impact evaluations that a country’s NTD program should already be running. The grant is strictly for the research itself.
How to apply for SGP VIII, and a mistake that gets people rejected
You apply online through ARNTD’s website. The form is available in English, French, and Portuguese, so language shouldn’t stop anyone from applying, though if you’re shortlisted, your full proposal will need to be in English at that stage.
One mistake trips up a lot of applicants. Along with your application, you must upload a completed budget using ARNTD’s own budget template, which you download from inside the application form itself. Miss this, or use your own budget format instead, and your application gets rejected automatically. No review, no second chance. That single detail knocks out more applications than weak research ideas do, honestly.
Once you submit, an independent panel reviews everything and shortlists candidates. Shortlisted researchers then get asked to develop a fuller proposal. ARNTD says award announcements are expected around November 15, 2026, and if you’re picked, your host institution has to confirm in writing that they’ll support the project with space and facilities.
Projects funded under the early-career track need to wrap up within 10 months. Once your project starts, expect ARNTD to check in regularly, bi-weekly calls with their secretariat, plus quarterly reports.
Where to apply and who to contact
You apply directly on ARNTD’s website at arntd.org, under their Grants & Funding section. If you have questions about anything in this call, ARNTD asks that you email secretariat@arntd.org with “Inquiry SGP VIII” as your subject line. More information at https://arntd.org/grants-funding/
