Ede – “Strong people don’t put others down – they lift them up.”
So says the discreet sign at the entrance to one of the most remarkable research facilities in Africa.
Run by a Cameroon-raised, Harvard-trained molecular biologist, the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) has been at the forefront in the fight of killer diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever – and now Covid-19.
The force behind the lab is Professor Christian Happi, who has a steely belief in catapulting young African scientists to the top of scientific research.
“As long as Africa fails to make intellectual contributions, it will always be told what to do,” he said.
ACEGID’S 52-year-old director has already set down a marker in the battle against coronavirus by devising a low-cost test for the highly contagious disease. “I want to develop simple, inexpensive solutions that are aligned to Africa and our environment,” he said, speaking in his office, its walls decorated with diplomas, awards and photos of his family.
Happi founded his laboratory in 2016 in an ageing building at Redeemer’s University in Ede, an unassuming town in southwest Nigeria, with the help of funding from the World Bank and Nigerian and foreign philanthropists.
Since then, nearly 1 000 scientists, most of them Nigerians and the others from West Africa, have passed through its doors to gain top-level experience in biochemistry and genomics.
A gleaming new building – “the biggest genomic research centre in Africa” – is scheduled to open by the end of the year in the tropical forests around Ede. “It makes sense to be here in Nigeria. This country is the giant of Africa – if it fails, the entire continent will fail with it,” said Happi.
Nigeria is not only home to around 200 million people – its vast territory, stretching from the edge of the Sahara to the tropical coastline of the Gulf of Guinea, also hosts epidemics ranging from malaria and typhoid to meningitis, cholera and yellow fever.
This year, every mind at ACEGID is focussed on Covid-19.
Nigeria has officially recorded around 800 deaths and more than 30 000 cases, but the true extent of infection is likely to be much wider, given huge, dense populations in Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and Kano, where social distancing is almost impossible.
The country carries out on average only 3 000 tests per day – a drop in the ocean for what is needed.
Happi’s team in Ede has developed a fast-track test that has already been certified by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is currently being vetted for use in Nigeria and across Africa. The test – which resembles the kind of simple dip stick used for pregnancies – costs around US$3 (2.60 euros) each, against around US$100 for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, a method that requires an expensive, well-equipped lab.
“I’m not interested in the big PCR machines used in Europe or the United States, which no public hospital here can afford,” said Happi, striding between laboratories.
“I want tests that a grandmother in a village can get done in her rural clinic.” Happi’s quest for simplicity is being conducted with state-of-the-art equipment. It was the first lab to sequence the genetic profile of the new coronavirus in Africa – a feat that took just a few days after the first case of the disease showed up in Lagos in early March.
The speed was “incredible”, said Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). “Previously we would have done it in Europe or in the States.”
There are many advantages to having research excellence on one’s doorstep. “The virus can evolve rapidly and in many ways. With genomic sequencing you have the ability to study that in real time,” said Ihekweazu. “People might have thought that this work was impossible in Africa,” Happi said last month in the prestigious science journal Nature. “But we are demonstrating that the continent’s scientists can generate crucial data in the global fight against Covid-19 – as well as contributing to the field of genomics.”
Happi and Ihekweazu, who are of the same age, know each other well and have a common foe.
“Professor Happi is a tough character – we have a lot of debates, but both of us know that we are committed to Africa and to the country,” said Ihekweazu.
In Cameroon, where he caught malaria as a child, Happi trained in biochemistry before going to Britain in 1998 at the age of 30 to attend a conference on malaria.
At the time, Africa was almost literally the country cousin in terms of its status in world research, and Happi recalled arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport – “a little African with a big suitcase, and feeling a little lost”.
But he made a big impact in the conference at Oxford, where as one of the few African attendees he put forward “a bunch of wacky ideas” for using gene technology in vaccines.
Such methods are at the heart of several Covid vaccines being researched today, but at the time such thinking was out of the mainstream, and Happi was snapped up by Harvard to carry out research there.
-Nampa/AFP