View: The future of medicine may depend on African DNA

A $100 million investment over the next decade could help African scientists unlock discoveries that improve medicine worldwide. Medicine is moving toward a future in which a person’s DNA can help to predict disease risk, guide personalized treatment and inform therapies for genetic disorders. But as precision medicine and genetic therapies become more mainstream, the science behind these advances has a major gap: they do not work equally well for everyone. Despite Africa’s central place in human origins and its extraordinary genetic diversity, people of African ancestry remain underrepresented in the genomic datasets used to understand disease, estimate health risks, and develop treatments. Closing that gap is going to require more than just collecting more samples. It will take sustained investment in African scientists, research institutions, biobanks, and bioinformatics capacity. We propose an initial $100 million investment over 10 years to build a coordinated, African-led genomics initiative, with African governments, international funders and life sciences companies sharing responsibility for its success. It will be worth the investment. We already know that studying genetic