The future of African science will depend on its ‘home-grown’ talent – research for Africa, led by Africans. EDCTP Senior Fellowships provide opportunities for leading researchers to consolidate and develop their research programmes and leadership skills while also contributing to the development of the next generation of researchers as supervisors and mentors. EDCTP Career Development Fellowships enable researchers showing outstanding early-career promise to establish their scientific independence within sub-Saharan Africa.

Professor Collen Masimirembwa (Zimbabwe) is one of Africa’s leading experts in pharmacogenomics. Following his scientific training, he spent 10 years working in the industry in Europe before returning to Africa. He set up the African Institute of Biomedical Science and Technology to promote drug discovery and drug development in Africa. In 2018, Professor Masimirembwa was awarded the HUGO African Prize for his contribution to genetics in Africa. He was appointed as a member of the EDCTP Scientific Advisory Committee in January 2019.

Professor Dorothy Yeboah-Manu (Ghana) has developed a wide-ranging programme of research on mycobacterial infections affecting Ghana and other African countries. These include landmark studies on a TB-causing bacterium, Mycobacterium africanum, restricted to parts of West Africa. Professor Yeboah-Manu was awarded the Royal Society’s Africa Prize in 2018.

There are many signs that EDCTP fellowships are contributing to the career development of talented researchers. Among Senior Fellows, for example, Professor Faith Osier (Kenya) was appointed President of the International Union of Immunological Societies in October 2019. Dr Stellah Mpagama (Tanzania) was invited to give a plenary presentation during the Ending TB Emergency session at the 2019 Union Conference held in Hyderabad, India. Dr Mpagama has been a key member of the PanACEA Consortium, which has been testing alternative treatments for TB. In addition, Dr Stephanus Malherbe (South Africa) was one of the winners of a 2019 Young Investigator Prize awarded by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

EDCTP’s Clinical Research and Product Development Fellowships have also demonstrated significant impact. The fellowships provided researchers with experience within pharmaceutical companies followed by a period of support within host institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. Following his fellowship, Dr Isidore Traore (Burkina Faso) was promoted to Assistant Professor at the University of Bobo-Dioulasso and took up the role of Technical Director at his home institution, the Centre Muraz, in Burkina Faso. Dr Stephen Ian Walimbwa (Uganda) was appointed Clinical Trials Manager and Clinical Trial Quality Manager and subsequently promoted to Clinical Trials Manager at the Infectious Diseases Institute of Makerere University in Uganda.

After completing her EDCTP-TDR Clinical Research and Product Development Fellowship, Dr Atinuke Olaleye (Nigeria) was appointed as Director of the Centre for Advanced Medical Research and Biotechnology (CAMRAB) at Babcock University in Nigeria. Dr Olaleye was subsequently awarded an EDCTP Career Development Fellowship to conduct an observational study on parasite resistance in the context of intermittent preventive treatment of pregnant women. A second EDCTP-TDR Clinical Research and Product Development Fellow, Dr Solomon Abay (Ethiopia), has also been successful in his application for an his application for an EDCTP Career Development Fellowship.

Career Development Fellow Dr Justin Komguep Nono (South Africa) was awarded a Future Leaders – African Independent Research (FLAIR) Fellowship through a partnership between the African Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society. Dr Nono has also been appointed a Co-Chair of the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance Research Working Group as well as a WHO Regional Expert for the control of schistosomiasis. Dr Moustapha Mbow (Senegal) was selected as a “Rising Star” Scientist at the 2019 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Addis Ababa

Dr Misaki Wayengera (Uganda) developed a rapid diagnostic test for Ebola virus disease, and was successful in an application to EDCTP to develop his diagnostic test further (AdjustEBOVGP-Dx project). In 2019, his product received first prize in the WHO Innovation Challenge (product development category). For this achievement, he also received special recognition in person from the President of Uganda.

Career Development Fellow Dr Marion Sumari-de Boer (Tanzania) recently published data on adherence to antiretroviral therapy among people living with HIV in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. Her work identified a range of reasons why participants were reporting very high levels of adherence even though two mHealth interventions (text messaging and real-time medication monitoring) were suggesting much lower adherence.

Private sector partnering for maternal and child health

A new partnership with Novartis and Fondation Botnar will provide career development fellowship support in maternal, child and adolescent health and wellbeing.

EDCTP is committed to working with like-minded partners from the public and private sector, to align activities and to leverage additional funding for research into poverty-related infectious diseases.

In 2019, it established a new partnership with Novartis and Fondation Botnar, which is providing €750,000 to support five Career Development Fellowships. The fellowships will support research on the interplay between poverty-related infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases in women and children.

Women and children remain vulnerable groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Child and maternal mortality remain high by global standards, and populations increasingly face the double burden of infectious disease and non-communicable diseases, exacerbated by food insecurity and malnutrition. Conversely, there are opportunities to deliver integrated care across infectious and non-communicable diseases, maximising the benefit of each contact with health systems.

The call was designed to address the shortage of mid-career researchers in the region working on maternal and child health. It will provide an opportunity for promising early-career researchers to establish themselves as independent researchers, and for researchers gaining skills abroad to return to the region, helping to build a critical mass of appropriately skilled and trained researchers.

What impact on global health do you hope to achieve with this EDCTP Senior Fellowship?

Malaria continues to be a significant global health challenge, and a highly effective vaccine remains an urgent priority. One of the major obstacles to developing such a vaccine is the ability of the parasite to vary proteins on its outer surface that are usually targeted by antibodies. This fellowship will enable me to better understand how to design malaria vaccines that overcome this immune evasion strategy. Concurrently, I will build research capacity for malaria vaccine development by training African scientists.

How will this fellowship contribute to the development of your career?

Through the support I have received, I have been able to strengthen personal and institutional South-South partnerships between Kenya, Mali, Ghana and Senegal. I have been able to secure additional funding to expand my research team and projects. This in turn enabled me to connect with more African research leaders from Uganda, Gabon, Tanzania and Namibia.

My strong track record in research contributed to my election as the first African and only second female President of the International Union of Immunological Societies, with over 60,000 members globally. I have been appointed to several scientific funding boards and as an official #TOGETHERBAND ambassador for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being.

What were your main achievements in 2019?

I advanced knowledge on a little-studied but important potential malaria vaccine candidate named Pf3D7_1136200. I continued to support and mentor three African PhD students who are on track with their research.

I was invited as a keynote speaker at two major scientific meetings – the Bill & Melinda Gates Grand Challenges Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the Falling Walls Conference in Berlin, Germany. I continue to be an important role model for male and female African scientists throughout the continent.

What is the impact you hope to achieve with this EDCTP Career Development Fellowship?

My ultimate career goal is to provide an informative and sustainable solution to the problem of schistosomiasis. In the process, I expect to build a renowned biomedical research laboratory in Africa and train a minimum of 50 PhD students during my career.

Under this fellowship, specifically, I hope to gain experience of ‘omics’ technologies and establish a research group that will investigate host omics during schistosomiasis. I expect to generate unprecedented databases of potential markers of schistosomiasis infection and pathology to aid the development of diagnostic, monitoring and control tools.

I have also enrolled several MSc and PhD students that I hope to train to completion under this fellowship.

How will this fellowship contribute to the development of your career?

The Career Development Fellowship provides a generous funding package that should enable me to establish my group at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

The prestige of the fellowship should help me attract more competitive funding and gain access to major research networks locally and internationally.

The prospective achievements under the fellowship should also guarantee my appointment to leadership positions and promotions.

Altogether, the advantages foreseeable through the EDCTP fellowship should provide me with enough momentum and connections to facilitate the expansion of my research group in South Africa and Cameroon, where I conduct clinical research.

What were your main achievements in 2019?

In 2019, with the enormous support of the EDCTP Career Development Fellowship funds and associated prestige, I was promoted to Team Leader at the University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences in South Africa immediately after the completion of my postdoctoral fellowship.

I was appointed to the Division of Immunology executive committee of the University, invited to co-chair the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance Research Working Group, selected as a WHO schistosomiasis expert for training in October 2019 in Brazzaville and selected as a panellist at the virtual Keystone Symposium on Helminths: New insights from immunity to global health.

I also secured additional funding from the prestigious UK Royal Society and the African Academy of Science under the FLAIR fellowship scheme and succeeded in training to completion three MSc students (in Cameroon) and one PhD student (in South Africa), with my PhD student securing a self-initiated Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene small grant of his own under my supervision.

My scientific output also progressed in 2019, with novel reports made by my team, my mentor’s team and collaborators on soluble and cellular factors involved in host protection against schistosomiasis.

What impact on global health do you hope to achieve with this EDCTP Career Development Fellowship?

This fellowship will enable me to carry out research to provide insight into the impact of environmental differences on the immune system, and how differential exposures imprint cell functions and transcriptional signatures. Such an approach will provide valuable knowledge for vaccine development by revealing key considerations for efficacy in different geographical areas. The skills acquired will enable myself and other African scientists to conduct competitive basic research.

How will this fellowship contribute to the development of your career?

I hope to use the experience gained in this fellowship project to apply for grants and senior fellowships and move forward my long-term ambition to become an independent researcher, helping African students to carry out competitive research.

This fellowship is also a good opportunity to collaborate with a wide range of scientists and research institutions at the national and international level, and most importantly to advance my academic career to become full professor.

What were your main achievements in 2019?

We conducted fieldwork in rural, semi-urban and urban settings in Senegal where we successfully collected all the samples. We then spent 6 months at Leiden University collecting samples from Dutch participants, optimising immunological methods, analysing all the samples by mass cytometry, and beginning analysis of the data.