ICBE grants are awarded following an open and competitive process involving peer reviewers from across the continent and a jury of pan-African experts. Upon receiving proposals, the ICBE-RF Secretariat checks them for eligibility and distributes them among 52 peer reviewers, based at universities and think tanks in 17 countries, for review and scoring.

The proposals and the peer scores are then submitted to a pan-African jury of 12 members, from 9 countries, for further review and a second round of scoring. The proposals are ranked by score and submitted to a plenary session of the jury for discussion. The jury faces the difficult task of choosing between highly qualified candidates and is responsible for making the final recommendations for grant awards.

Upon receiving its recommendations, the Secretariat conducts due diligence checks on the sponsoring institutions and the finer details of the application to ensure clarity of objectives and outputs, presence and credibility of implementing partners, matching of methodology and outputs, and appropriateness of budget. When an application passes all the checkpoints, a grant offer is sent to the applicant institution and the disbursement of funds follows once the grant offer is accepted.

Download this flow chart to view the selection process in a graphical format (PDF).