The platforms DRIPS monitors for new calls. Search them yourself — each profile explains what the platform covers, what it costs, and how to sign in.
20 platforms
Global. All disciplines.
An EU-funded continental aggregator built specifically around Africa-Europe research and innovation partnerships, and the closest thing found to a purpose-built replacement for the general-purpose sites that serve better-resourced universities. Every listing carries a deadline, which is what separates it from most continental portals.
Africa · civil society, development and philanthropy · roughly 65 calls per monthly roundup
A knowledge hub for African civil society curated by an NGO strategist, publishing a monthly funding roundup that is unusually well organised: a single table of around 65 opportunities with deadline, value, eligibility and an explicit flag for whether universities and research institutions may apply. Most entries are civil-society calls that UNIMA cannot use, but the research-eligible minority includes calls that appear nowhere else on this list. Browse straight to the roundup post.
Africa and Commonwealth countries · all disciplines · scholarships, fellowships, research grants and short courses
Aimed at African students and early-career professionals, with a dedicated research-grants section that surfaces academic calls alongside its heavier scholarship coverage. Deadlines appear on listing pages, which makes scanning efficient. The site also runs commercial content, including student loan promotion, so read listings on their own terms.
Commonwealth · all disciplines · a forward calendar of grant closing dates running roughly a year ahead
A forward-looking calendar rather than a list of what is open today, which makes it useful for planning rather than reacting — staff can see closing dates up to a year out and prepare. Several ACU schemes are reserved for low- and middle-income Commonwealth countries, which puts Malawi in the favoured group rather than the general pool.
Africa · social sciences and humanities · institutes, comparative research networks, small grants and fellowships
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa is the continent's own social science council, funding African scholars directly. Its institutes—Democratic Governance, Gender, Economic Policy—combine funding with structured residential training, which suits early-career staff.
Africa-facing · all research fields · hundreds of European mobility, fellowship and collaboration schemes
The European Commission's researcher-mobility service has a hub written specifically for Africa-based researchers. Its practical value is that it is a static, readable curation of opportunities that otherwise sit behind the EU Funding and Tenders Portal's JavaScript interface — it solves an access problem rather than adding new funders. Coverage spans all fields including social sciences and humanities, and the quarterly Africa newsletter is a low-effort way to keep sight of European fellowship rounds without monitoring each institute.
Low- and middle-income countries worldwide · global health research and research training · NIH mechanisms with LMIC-eligible applicants
The NIH component dedicated to global health research and training is the part of NIH most open to institutions in low-income countries. Its funding table lists programme, funding opportunity number, and due date in a plain format that is easy to scan. Its significance for UNIMA is structural rather than editorial: several Fogarty mechanisms — most importantly the Emerging Global Leader Award — make the LMIC institution the grantee rather than a subawardee, which is rare across NIH. One navigation warning: the general funding landing page is a dateless directory shell; the Funding Opportunities page is the one that carries deadlines.
Worldwide · historical humanities — history, archaeology, art history, legal history, history of science · research projects, scholarships and PhD funding
A German private foundation that funds the historical humanities with an unusually open eligibility rule: candidates may apply regardless of nationality or place of work, with no requirement for a German host institution and no bar on overseas applicants. For UNIMA, it opens opportunities for history, legal history and archaeology.
Sub-Saharan Africa · infectious disease, health systems, digital health and clinical research · the largest external health-research pool Malawi is eligible for
The EU-Africa partnership that succeeded EDCTP2, funding health research with mandatory sub-Saharan African participation. It matters here because of scale rather than volume of listings — individual awards run to millions of euros, and Malawian institutions are expected participants, not tolerated extras. One structural limit must be stated plainly to staff: the legal coordinator of a Horizon Europe consortium must normally be based in an EU Member State or Associated Country, and among sub-Saharan African countries only South Africa holds the agreement permitting coordination. Malawi joins as a full partner and can hold scientific leadership of a work package, but not the coordinator role.
Global South · all disciplines · funding, scholarships and jobs · 770+ funding posts
Explicitly framed around correcting opportunity imbalance for the Global South, which shows in what it selects: calls where LMIC applicants can actually lead, rather than calls that merely mention developing countries. Posting is frequent — ten funding items in four days at the time of checking. Headlines carry the value; deadlines usually sit inside the post rather than on the archive page, so the listing view alone is not enough.
Malawi · all disciplines · national research funding, ethics approval and the national research
Malawi's national science authority and the country's node for several international programmes, which makes it the most consequential single source on this list even though its website is the least polished. NCST runs domestic funding including the NCST Small Grants Scheme and the Science and Technology Fund, hosts Grand Challenges Malawi, and is Malawi's council within the Science Granting Councils Initiative. Critically, national annexes for multi-country calls — grant ceilings and which themes Malawi may enter — are set by NCST and are often published nowhere else. It is also the national research ethics and clearance authority
Europe-hosted · humanities and social sciences · 14+ institute fellowship calls on one page, all dated
An aggregator carrying the concurrent fellowship calls of more than a dozen European Institutes for Advanced Study. For UNIMA, the attraction is that residential fellowships in this network are among the few well-funded humanities and social science opportunities with no nationality bar, and at least one member institute runs a stream restricted to ODA-recipient countries — which favours Malawian applicants rather than merely tolerating them. Suitable for Humanities, Law and Social Science staff.
Global · education and international development research · funding calls mixed with calls for papers and vacancies
NORRAG is hosted at the Geneva Graduate Institute and is well connected across education-and-development research.
Global · all disciplines · grants, fellowships, scholarships, jobs and conferences
A high-frequency listings site covering every world region, with several posts a day. Despite the name, it is not restricted to youth schemes and regularly carries substantial research calls; its write-ups tend to be more detailed than most aggregators, often summarising eligibility, value and process rather than only linking out. That depth makes it useful as a first read on an unfamiliar call.
Global with a strong Africa focus · all disciplines · grants, fellowships, scholarships, conferences and competitions
One of the highest-volume opportunity feeds serving African audiences, posting several items a day across grants, fellowships, scholarships, internships, training and competitions. Listings are organised by region and by opportunity type, and each post carries the value and deadline in the headline. The editorial net is wide, so it catches youth and civil-society opportunities alongside academic ones — useful breadth, but staff should expect to filter.
Africa · health, climate, food systems and cross-cutting science · the active successor to the AAS science-funding programmes
This is a funder and is included here because it is the single most authoritative page for African-led science calls. Nairobi-based, it runs Grand Challenges Africa and DELTAS Africa and co-delivers programmes with international partners.
Global · all disciplines · searchable grant database with eligibility filtering
A structured grants database: every record carries a funder, deadline, amount and eligibility tags, and the platform is built around filtering by who you are and where you are rather than by browsing recent posts. The grant listings themselves render publicly, including deadline and amount, with the geography tag carried in the title. What the paid tiers add is the ability to filter — the Location and eligibility facets, saved searches, personalised alerts and CSV export are the gated features, not the underlying
Developing countries · agriculture, fisheries, forestry, biodiversity, energy, climate and water · organised by subject
The strongest single source of grants, and the best-structured: each entry gives funder, deadline, value and eligibility together, grouped by subject area, so an agriculture or environment academic can scan a whole field in one page. Coverage is deliberately narrow — natural resources and the environment in developing countries — which is precisely why it outperforms broader sites for those faculties. The content lives at /funding-news/.
Africa-focused · global health, clinical and biomedical research · curated shortlist, regularly
A deliberately small, curated funding list attached to a large research-capacity network, rather than a high-volume feed. Roughly ten opportunities are listed at a time, each chosen for relevance to African health researchers, spanning biomedical research, infectious disease, epidemiology, climate and health, and childhood cancer. The low volume is the point: it is a filter, not a firehose. The wider network also carries free research-methods training that is useful to early-career staff.
Developing countries worldwide · all natural sciences · fellowships, research grants, prizes and visiting-scientist schemes
A UNESCO-affiliated academy based in Trieste that funds scientists in developing countries directly, with a consolidated deadlines page covering awards and medals, fellowships, research and project grants, visiting-scientist support and scientific meetings. Malawi qualifies across its schemes. Its PhD and postdoctoral fellowship programmes, run jointly with host institutions across the Global South, are among the few routes to fully funded doctoral training that do not require a Northern partner. Historically, its main annual cycle closes around 31 March.
