As a healthcare technology company focused on advancing African genomics, we recognise the importance of fostering knowledge transfer and community development. Which is why in order to promote our Commitment to Africa, we have created a trust to invest up to 5% of future proceeds from our commercial drug discovery program to help establish a more sustainable and thriving cyclical ecosystem across Africa’s scientific development space,and to ensure better quality healthcare delivery for the communities we operate in. Above all, this trust is designed to enable a consistent provision of better diagnostics and medicines for Africans while also amplifying capacity building within scientific research spaces across the continent.

While exercising strict compliance to Ethical, Legal, Social Implication (ELSI) guidelines, we are focused on advancing better health outcomes for global populations through precision medicine and addressing unmet needs for novel therapeutics in healthcare. The creation of our proprietary platform, aimed at powering drug discovery through its substantial bio and data-repository of deeply-phenotyped and diverse datasets, has the potential to drive understanding across multiple disease areas such as cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, sickle cell, autoimmune and rare diseases, and infectious diseases.

Commenting on our commitment to Africa, our Founder & CEO, Dr Abasi Ene-Obong, said: “The biggest challenge in drug discovery in Africa is adequate infrastructure and the extensive need for capacity building. As we work on delivering on our promise of precision medicine for Africans and the global population, we are striving to ensure that our work involves current African scientists and leaders in the field as well as supports the creation of more skilled Africans in science and additional jobs across the continent.

“This initiative is designed to continue fostering partnerships within the African scientific body, to reflect the leadership of Africans in global drug discovery research, and to generate sustainable healthcare delivery systems that will ultimately benefit African communities participating in the scientific work that advances better outcomes for all. It is the inclusion of African talent that will make our drug discovery work successful in bridging the disparity gap within genomics data. Africa has the ability to contribute far beyond the 1% in global drug discovery that is currently taking place within the continent, and we believe 54gene will help accelerate those contributions.“

This new trust is set to be managed by an advisory committee. As our commercial operations grow, our Commitment to Africa and creation of this trust will ensure an African footprint and sustainable growth in global drug discovery across the continent. 

Also in line with our commitment to genomic research, we are giving multiple scholarships to genomic scientists through our non-profit foundation – the African Centre for Translational Genomics (ACTG). Click here to apply if interested.

*T & C’s apply