About us

The BecA-ILRI Hub sees implementing a strong program in capacity building and training as central to achieving its mission. The Hub provides opportunities to increase the capacity of institutions and individuals in Africa to conduct biosciences-related research, and to develop and deliver new technologies. It does this through providing opportunities for early career African scientists to work with more experienced mentors for research experience, short and long-term training, workshops and seminars, and access to ongoing learning through distance education.

About this workshop

In African national research systems, wide disparities exist in human resources and infrastructural capacities to access and fully exploit the application scope of bioinformatics. Efforts to build capacities of researchers in Africa’s national research systems have the potential to catalyze cutting-edge, hypothesis-based research that will accelerate Africa’s scientific and technological development.

The BecA-ILRI Hub in collaboration with its partners has designed the training workshop on Advanced Bioinformatics to “train the trainer”. The impact will go beyond the 25 researchers trained at BecA-ILRI Hub, thus expanding the network of NARS researchers with strengthened capacity for application of bioinformatics in research addressing pressing agricultural challenges in Africa.

Many research Institutes in the African region have embraced the use of genomics and bioinformatics in their research activities, but the skills to apply this techniques are largely lacking. Hence this course goes towards strengthening the capacity of NARS researchers in bioinformatics and computational biology. This workshop will provide an overview of the existing tools / pipelines available for next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis, as well as tools for data visualization. The proposed course aims to equip bioscience researchers in east and central Africa with advanced skills in bioinformatics that are applicable to their areas of research.