Enhancing agricultural research in Africa through bioinformatics–The BecA-ILRI Hub hosts annual training advanced genomics and bioinformatics workshop

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Written on Wednesday, 16 September 2015 13:19

On 10 September 2015 the African Academy of Sciences (AAAS) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency launched the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA). The impetus for this initiative is to increase the capacity of African Scientists to conduct for scientific and health research in Africa.

During the same week, the BecA-ILRI Hub kicked off its annual Advanced Genomics and Bioinformatics training workshop. The intensive 10-day training which runs up to Friday 18 September is among the four annual workshops designed by the BecA-ILRI Hub to address capacity gaps in agricultural biosciences research in Africa.

Through this workshop, researchers from national agricultural research systems (NARS) in eastern, central and western Africa acquire skills that help them decipher the huge amounts of biological data that could translate to the more rapid solution of challenges to acquiring food and nutritional security on the continent.

Julia Khayeli, a participant from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agricultural Technology in Kenya said ‘I am very excited because I have finally made sense of the sequences I got from my research!’ In addition to deciphering her data, Khayeli had the opportunity to network with researchers from 12 eastern, central and western African countries.

 The workshop is being conducted in collaboration with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) which has partnered with the BecA-ILRI Hub for the last nine years, providing access to technical advice and enhanced expertise from the institution and co-convening regional bioinformatics workshops.

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Read a related story on the partnership with SLU:

Building bioinformatics capacity in Africa: The BecA-ILRI Hub and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences partnership

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