Afrocentric Solutions for Disease Control and Health Care

Coordinators: Dr Fortunate Mokoena (North-West University), Prof. Japie Greeff (North-West University) & Dr Mokgerwa Z. Monama (University of Limpopo)

Scientific Question and Goal

To tackle Africa’s major health challenges, including infectious and non-communicable diseases and the underrepresentation of African populations in global health research.

Establish and expand interdisciplinary, collaborative health research projects across NITheCS Focus Areas, including a dedicated rare disease research node connecting clinicians, geneticists, computational scientists, molecular biologists, engineers, and data analysts.

Short-term objectives

• Establish new interdisciplinary collaborative health-related projects and further develop existing ones within and across NITheCS Focus Areas. For example, we could work towards building a dedicated rare disease research node within NITheCS that connects clinicians, geneticists, computational scientists, molecular biologists, engineers, and data analysts.
• Establish a collaborative framework that connects early-career researchers in South Africa with established national and international scientists, providing a strong foundation for these researchers to develop their own independent labs while fostering a culture of knowledge-sharing and future research impact.
• Recruit postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows through NITheCS funding opportunities to strengthen capacity in the relevant research areas.
• Promote knowledge dissemination by developing tools, web servers, databases, and computational pipelines, while sharing research outputs through publications, conferences, and workshops.

Long-term objectives

• Translate research outputs into meaningful clinical impact by fostering academic–industry collaborations. The outputs generated through this research programme will help position us to attract industrial and biotechnology partners, while building lasting relationships with clinicians and industry stakeholders to support locally led biotechnology developments.
• Foster a sustainable research and training ecosystem through the long-term development of bioinformatics capacity, supporting the next generation of computational scientists across South Africa, particularly in healthcare-related research.
• Strengthen South Africa’s position as an international leader in addressing global healthcare challenges through innovative, collaborative, and locally driven research.

Institutions

• Rhodes University
• University of Cape Town
• University of the Western Cape
• University of Johannesburg
• Stellenbosch University
• University of Zululand

Members

Fortunate Mokoena, Japie Greeff, Mokgerwa Z. Monama, Özlem Tastan Bishop, Kevin Lobb, Caroline Ross, Samuel Egieyeh, Krishna Govender, Caitlin Uren, Marlo Möller, Martin Bucher, Shahida Moosa, Pieter Neethling, DC Petersen, Khajamohiddin Syed, Giuseppe Pellicane, Tendamudzimu Tshiwawa