Prof Bassirou Bonfoh, DVM, PhD
Director General, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire (CSRS)
• Which institutions are involved in your consortium? How did your consortium come about? The “Afrique One” consortium includes a core structure of 7 Universities and 4 research institutes from 6 countries in sub-Saharan Africa , in partnership with 3 northern organizations . The
consortium is an African initiative driven by African leadership with a clear vision of strategic needs for developing coordinated and integrated health research at the human-animal-wildlife interface. We postulate that it is through the leadership abilities of Africans that sustainable research capacity in Africa will be strengthened. The consortium will interact with 11 satellite institutions and research centres in sub-Saharan Africa through horizontal dissemination of research expertise. These institutions are drawn from existing partnerships among the 11 core institutions. The initiative has developed from the African Bovine Tuberculosis Network, a collaborative grouping which came together to enhance surveillance and control of bovine tuberculosis in Africa (funded by the Wellcome Trust ‘Livestock for Life’ initiative). This new proposal builds on this network by incorporating a wider range of zoonotic diseases, and studying them from a range of different perspectives including biomathematics and quantitative analysis, ecology, tropical and veterinary medicine, molecular parasitology, and health economics. The consortium with a one health perspective, comprises a core African institutes with medical, veterinary and wildlife expertise as well as representation from both francophone and anglophone countries from West and East Africa (bridging language and geographic gaps).
• What do you feel are the main problems and challenges in building research capacity in Africa? There are several important constraints hampering the development of research capacity in Africa. Most important we feel is the brain drain as a consequence of the difficulty of building careers of African scientists at postdoctoral level. Poor infrastructure, limited experience of acquiring national and international research funding, a lack of further training and mentoring, high teaching demands, and limited local research positions all serve to draw our best scientists away from the very environments in which their science should be most effectively conducted. In terms of the promotion of ecosystem and population health approaches, remaining problems include poor interdiciplinary communication and exchange of knowledge between research institutions and universities, and limited capacity for quantitative and molecular epidemiology, biostatics, and data modeling.
• How is your consortium working to address all these problems? The consortium platform will provide facilities and career development opportunities for the most promising young post-doctoral scientists to become internationally competitive researchers in their home countries. We will do this through the establishment of really well supported post-doctoral research fellowships, increased post-doctoral training opportunities, buy-out time and academic support for lecturers to develop their own independent research projects, and the provision of small equipment grants. Research in public and veterinary epidemiology increasingly demands quantitative and interdisciplinary skills that are difficult to acquire without a broad network of collaboration and are particularly lacking in the public and animal health domains. It demands effective partnerships, sharing of resources, such as laboratory facilities and exchange programs among African institutions, particularly those divided by regionalization and language barriers. The “one health” concept offers a unique opportunity to develop inter-disciplinary research capacity and can greatly enhance the potential of African researchers and institutions to attract grant-funding independently because African countries contain some of the most interesting and important environments in which to conduct this sort of research. Institutes within our consortium will develop their own research agendas, and foster more equitable and sustainable partnerships with northern institutions.
• The lecturer buy-outs are an interesting idea. Presumably there are also heavy needs for teachers – how do you propose to balance research and teaching needs? Lecturer buy-out is one of the five activities of the consortium. The short-term grants (up to 6 months) will allow post-doctoral scientists to take time out of teaching, travel, if necessary, to a different research institution and develop their own research proposals. Like most universities, we believe effective science teaching is best conducted in a vibrant research environment, and that ultimately, teaching capacity will be enhanced through the development of well-funded research programs. Applicants from across both core and satellite members of the consortium will be eligible and awards made on the basis of an annual competition. The eligible support costs include travel, small pilot projects, generation of preliminary data, laptops, software, and bench fees.
• What do you hope your efforts will achieve
We hope to achieve a critical mass of internationally competitive African scientists and research groups led by African universities and research institutions. Each institution (core and satellite) has specific strengths with regard to zoonotic diseases. Together with the northern backstopping, the consortium will also create (i) tighter linkage of scientific agenda with policy formulation and implementation, (ii) a bridge between anglophone and francophone institutes as well as between East and West African research (iii) the consolidation of African expertise in the field of “one health” concept to better address ecosystem and population health.
· After 4 years of implemetation, where does Afrique One strenghts lie ?
· By the way, have you been able to obtain the consensus around the One Health concept ? Does it properly work ?
· You are now ending Afrique One 1st phase, what will the next phase be about ? Prof Bassirou Bonfoh, DVM, PhD
Director of the consortium, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d’Ivoire (CSRS)
