Africa: opportunities for growth
Authors: None The Lancet Digital Health
Journal: The Lancet Digital Health (2019)

Research in Africa presents huge opportunities. In July, an Africa-focused genomics start-up announced that seed funding had been secured to build the world's first and largest pan-African biobank. The company leading the enterprise, 54Gene, has begun data collection in Nigeria and aims to expand to other parts of Africa in the coming months. This is a great leap towards inclusivity of African research in global research efforts, reducing bias in future genome-wide association studies or machine learning algorithms, and an example for others to follow across all areas of research. Mariamawit Yeshak, assistant professor of pharmacognosy at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, speaking at The Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting in San Diego, elaborated on the growth of research in African countries, saying that although only 1·7% of global scholarly publications come from Africa, research output has made great strides during the past few decades, increasing at the highest rate in Nigeria and South Africa. Although the number of publications from African researchers has increased in top-ranked journals, this has yet to translate to locally relevant societal change. However, can research have local impact when much of the funding received for studies is from international organisations? China, for instance, is a key player in the funding of global research and the country's role in research has been gaining recognition in Africa over the past two decades. China's government and businesses provide loans and grants worldwide, brokered with local businesses and academies, mostly through the Belt and Road Initiative, but also in Africa through the China-Asian African Cooperation Centre and Sino-African Joint Research Centre. The projects funded are those that have the potential to provide global solutions, be they grape and rice agriculture in Kenya, hosting or providing sponsorship to African university students, or providing fast, reliable internet across the continent. Huawei, China's telecommunications giant, has spent years developing internet solutions and has installed a high-capacity fibre-optic cable between Africa and Asia, and has developed around 70% of the mobile phone networks in Africa. Chinese and South Korean investment have largely driven the technological advances seen in the region, with investments as high as US$2·4 billion, according to figures from Bloomberg. There are concerns that, as a result of the partnership between African countries and Huawei, that there is potential for data espionage and a risk of a censorship throughout the region, similar to that seen in China. But the concerns about Huawei are largely superseded by the benefits that derive from progress seen in infrastructure and connectivity. As a result, an area of research that Africa might be expected to lead is in fifth-generation mobile technology (5G). Deployed in South Korea and the USA earlier this year, and with Sweden, Estonia, Japan, and Turkey planning launches by 2020, 5G promises to be the answer to an ever-increasing demand on mobile technology, permitting huge computational capacity for on-the-go analyses, high-quality video feeds, and image transfer. Rollout of 5G in Africa will begin this year, and is expected to be widely deployed by 2021. This technology will enable countries with 5G to surpass others, such as Germany, in communication technology. A continued agreement has been struck between Huawei and African countries for partnership over the next 3 years, which will seek to strengthen the sector to include the internet of things and cloud computing with the rollout of 5G. Indeed it is expected that the new bandwidth will enable the support of internet-connected devices and live processing of large datasets, facilitating real-time use of artificial intelligence in big data, such as those being gathered by 54Gene, to derive insights into personalised health care. The UK, by contrast, will not see rollout of this technology until 2020, and NHSX have been considering how the uptake of the technology will affect security and democratisation of healthcare. Given that the projected number of mobile internet users in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to reach 634 million by 2025, and will account for 87% of mobile connections in the region, this continent holds great promise for passing on knowledge of the capability of 5G across the health-care sector. Africa will lead, we will follow. For more on Chinese investments in Africa see https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-01398-x/index.html For more on Chinese investments in Africa see https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-01398-x/index.html