The 2026 edition

Equitably integrating mental health into Primary Health Care in Africa

Why this theme

The burden of mental health disorders is rising fast across Africa, driven by population growth, urbanisation, conflict and climate shocks. At the same time specialist services remain scarce, concentrated in capital cities, and financially out of reach for most people.

Integrating mental health into Primary Health Care is the realistic path to universal access. The health post, the community centre and the multi-purpose health worker are, in practice, the first and often the only point of contact with the health system. That is where screening, listening and referral must become possible.

Young African innovators and researchers are already building the pieces of that integration: AI-assisted screening tools, tele-counselling in local languages, community health worker training, epidemiological studies documenting the real scale of the need. GHAYIB exists to find them, fund them and support them.

The barriers GHAYIB removes

Four obstacles come up again and again in the paths of young project leads.

Seed funding
The amounts needed to move from prototype to pilot are too small for investment funds and too large for self-funding. The 10,000 USD prize pool targets precisely that gap.
Mentorship
Access to experts able to challenge a model or a protocol is rare outside major centres. Speed Mentoring and the Galien Africa network open that access.
Ethics compliance
Data protection requirements and bioethics committee approval are poorly documented and often discovered too late. They are part of the scoring grid itself.
The research-to-field gap
Solid research goes untranslated into practice, and field solutions lack evidence. The two 2026 tracks answer that split.

Objectives of the edition

General objective: catalyse youth-led solutions for the equitable integration of mental health into Primary Health Care.

Specific objectives: spot high-potential innovations and research, remove the barriers to scaling (seed funding, mentorship, ethics compliance), and close the gap between research and the field.

New in 2026: two complementary tracks. The Technological Innovations track and the Scientific Research track are assessed on the same 100-point grid, with wording adapted to each discipline.