Regisration
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Abstract

Genomics can transform lives, enabling precision medicine, improving disease surveillance to inform public health and ensuring food security, but only when data are accessible and actionable for the populations, flora or fauna from which they originate. Africa hosts the world's greatest human genetic, animal and plant diversity, yet African scientists have historically lacked the infrastructure and capacity to fully analyze and derive impact from their own genomic data. H3ABioNet, a Pan-African bioinformatics network, spent 12 years building bioinformatics capacity across Africa, but its funding has ended. In 2024, support from the Wellcome Trust and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative enabled establishment of the African Bioinformatics Institute (ABI), a distributed network of African institutions mandated to coordinate bioinformatics infrastructure, research, and training to maximize the health and scientific impact of African life science data.

The ABI focuses on enabling African scientists and public health institutes to manage and analyze complex datasets from human genome projects, pathogen surveillance, biodiversity and agriculture. Working with partners like GA4GH, the ABI promotes international standards for secure, responsible data sharing while respecting African data sovereignty. A key initiative is coordinating a federated network of trusted research environments (TREs) with locally appropriate, community-centered governance that remains interoperable globally. By hosting African databases, facilitating collaborations, and building analytical capacity, the ABI ensures infrastructure investments translate into research outputs, clinical applications, and improved health and well-being. The Institute represents a shift from African data serving external discoveries to African leadership in deriving knowledge that transforms lives, positioning the continent as both steward of its genomic resources and driver of innovations that benefit Africa and the world.

Speaker

Nicola Mulder - Professor and head of the Computational Biology (CBIO) division at the University of Cape Town, Principal investigator of H3ABioNet, Pan African bioinformatics network for H3Africa

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