AGBL West Africa announced that they have supplied the World Bank funded African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) with the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 DNA sequencing machine. The system, the first to be supplied to Africa, will be installed in the campus of Redeemer University, Lagos, Nigeria.
ACEGID stated mission is to develop a critical mass of well-trained African genomic scientists and to empower African researchers and health workers to utilize genomic-based tools towards the control and elimination of infectious diseases.
AGBL West Africa has been collaborating with ACEGID since 2015, both parties signed a memorandum of understanding in 2019, and AGBL supplied a benchtop sequencing system; the iSeq free of charge to boost ACEGID’s sequencing capacity.
Professor Christian Happi, ACEGID director, declared that ACEGID was committed to the Illumina platforms for genomics sequencing. He envisaged that NovaSeq 6000 would transform genomics research in Africa and enable prompt diagnosis and characterization of infectious pathogens and contribute to the achievement of global health security.
He proudly announced, “We are planning to sequence 5000 human genomes in the next 5 years as part of the African Pharmacogenomics project. We are also planning to carry out 50,000 viral and microbial sequences in the next five years.”
AGBL Managing Director for North and West Africa, Mr. Mourad El Biche expressed AGBL’s enthusiasm for these developments, “Supporting scientific research capability in Africa is strategically important for our group, and we believe it will have positive impact on the future of the continent and world in general.”

Check out the Press Release http://bit.ly/38UDWhV