DELTAS Annual Meeting 2019, Dakar, Senegal
Written by Corinna Alberg.
This July the DELTAS (Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science) Africa programme held its annual meeting in Dakar, Senegal. The DELTAS Africa programme is a $100 million programme within the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA). It supports a number of consortia working to accelerate world-class research, foster innovation and promote scientific leadership. The programme aims to produce researchers with the capacity to publish and lead locally relevant and high-quality research that impacts health science, policy and practice in Africa.
This DELTAS meeting was a first for a number of reasons; it was the first time that the 11 programmes that comprise the DELTAS programme were represented not just by their Directors, but also by the early career researchers who had the opportunity to present their research to their peers. It was also the first time that the DELTAS meeting was held in a francophone country and the excellent simultaneous translation that was available ensured that no-one was excluded – although there was, at times, much wrestling with head-sets! It was noticeable how well the francophone researchers communicated in English. It was also the first time that the Cambridge-Africa programme was represented at a DELTAS meeting – Professor David Dunne who is the Cambridge PI for two DELTAS programmes, MUII-plus and THRiVE-2, attended along with Dr Amit Bhasin, the Cambridge-Africa Programme Manager and Corinna Alberg the THRiVE-2 and MUII-plus Cambridge coordinator. This is a key time for the THRiVE-2 and MUII-plus programmes as the 5 years of funding they received as part of DELTAS will be coming to an end at the end of 2020 for MUII-plus and in March 2021 for THRiVE-2. So we are all interested in having a better understanding of AESA’s vision for the successor programme, which will be funded primarily by the Wellcome Trust, with DELTAS renewal for a further phase due to be confirmed (or not) in the next few months.
One of the key debates taking place is whether the focus of the next DELTAS programme will be on research excellence in Africa or developing research equity across the continent. Currently many of the programmes are in East, Southern and West Africa with 4 programmes in East Africa, 3 in Southern Africa and 4 in West Africa. There is little representation in Central Africa, although some of the programmes have Fellows from central African countries. Also of interest was the work being conducted in the area of Good Financial Grant Practice (GFGP) which is an AESA programme that seeks to develop a new and integrated system for the financial governance of grant funds awarded to grantees which will standardise, simplify and strengthen the governance of grant funding.
The meeting also showcased and celebrated the work of DELTAS Fellows from across the programme with oral and poster presentations ranging from the link between malaria and iron deficiency in children in Africa, to mental health among carers of children with cerebral palsy in Zimbabwe to the detection of zoonotic pathogens in camels and their associated keds (biting flies). The latter presentation was given by THRiVE-2 post-doctoral fellow Dr Joel Bargul, who was awarded the prize for the best spotlight talk given by a male presenter during the meeting. Joel is a Kenyan THRiVE fellow, linked to Cambridge University, who is working with Professor Mark Carrington in the Department of Biochemistry on trypanosomiasis. Following on from his post-doctoral fellowship, Joel and Mark have also been awarded GCRF funding to continue their research collaboration and we look forward to seeing him back in Cambridge soon.
As well as presentations on the research being undertaken by DELTAS funded programmes, we had a wonderful presentation by Nobel Laureate, Prof Martin Chalfie. Martin Chalfie is a very engaging speaker and he talked about the discovery of green fluorescent protein which has been so important as a tool for biosciences in its use as a marker, and won him the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2008. He was asked whether innovation is more difficult today. His upbeat response that the golden age for science is always today and cited the exciting recent impact of CRISPR/Cas9 techniques for genetic research.
We also had some very interesting panel sessions, including one in which David Dunne participated, on achieving scientific quality for African led R&D. David stressed the importance of competition in research. He also noted the change he had seen over the past decade with research advancements in Africa. Earlier in his career it was difficult for programmes to appoint post-doctoral researchers. Now Africa has many excellent post-doctoral researchers to lead the continent to greater research excellence. Cambridge-Africa is looking forward to further contributing to the DELTAs programmes as the next phase dawns.