When we founded Chronic Disease Mate for Africa in 2020, we were a small, youth-led organization with a big vision and very little else. No major funding. No international recognition. Just a deep conviction that Africa’s chronic disease burden deserved urgent, coordinated, community-driven action.

Five years later, we’ve screened thousands of people, trained hundreds of young advocates, published research, influenced policy, and — somewhere along the way — caught the attention of the global health community.

Here is the story of how we got here, and what these recognitions mean for the work ahead.

Policy4Cancer Designathon — Winners

One of our proudest milestones came through the Policy4Cancer Designathon, a collaboration between the US-Nigeria C3-RISE program and the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR). CDMA entered with our CanReAct Initiative — a community-driven, research-to-policy approach to cervical and liver cancer prevention — and we won.

The win came with something even more valuable than a trophy: a pilot grant to begin implementing the CanReAct Initiative at scale. It was validation that our approach — grounding cancer prevention in community action and policy advocacy — was not just meaningful, but fundable and replicable.

Sustainability Leader Award — United People Global

CDMA was recognized with the Sustainability Leader Award by United People Global — an acknowledgment of our commitment to building health interventions that are not just impactful in the short term, but sustainable over time. Community ownership, local capacity building, and research-informed programming are not buzzwords for us. They are the architecture of everything we do.

AstraZeneca Young Health Programme — One Young World Summit 2022

In 2022, CDMA’s founder was selected as an AstraZeneca Young Health Programme (YHP) Scholar to attend the One Young World Summit in Manchester, United Kingdom — one of the world’s most prestigious gatherings of young leaders from over 190 countries.

The scholarship recognized young leaders working to address non-communicable diseases through advocacy, innovation, and community action. For our founder, it was an opportunity to bring CDMA’s story and Africa’s NCD burden to a global stage — and to return with new connections, ideas, and energy for the work.

Nigeria Tobacco Control Alliance — Official Member

CDMA is now an official member of the Nigeria Tobacco Control Alliance (NTCA) — contributing to national tobacco control efforts and advocacy. Tobacco use is one of the leading risk factors for NCDs, and our membership in NTCA reflects our commitment to tackling chronic disease at the policy and systems level, not just the community level.

What These Milestones Mean

We share these achievements not to celebrate ourselves, but to demonstrate something important: youth-led, community-grounded public health organizations in Africa can earn global recognition, win competitive grants, and sit at the policy table.

We are proof that it is possible.

And we are just getting started.

Follow CDMA on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and X to stay updated on our work. To partner with us or support our programs, reach out at chronicdiseasemateforafrica@gmail.com.