African iGEM Teams Showcase Event: Another step for African teams

The African 2022 iGEM teams showcase

Whenever I was asked about the book that influenced me the most, there is one answer: Safari. Safari is a short novel series about a doctor, who works at a small medical center located in the heart of central Africa. This series shaped my view of Africa, it made me fell in love with its nature, its culture, and even its diseases, and we have tons of those!

Reading Safari, the series by the Egyptian Tropical Medicine doctor and novelist Ahmed Khaled Tawfik made me dream about visiting the southern part of the continent, so I was super excited about the opportunity to visit Uganda.

To travel to Uganda I needed a visa, so I started filling out the online visa application. At the end of the application, I was asked to provide proof of vaccination, I had no issue with that.. I‘ve already got three doses of Covid-19 Vaccine, but this vaccine was for another disease caused by a virus, the Yellow Fever.

PolyVaccinces List

On the CDC site, there is a long list of recommended vaccines, from those, I got the Cholera, Meningococcal Meningitis, Poliomyelitis, flu, and yellow fever vaccines. Did I forget to mention the Malaria pills? There is no vaccine for malaria, but I needed to take a daily dose of medication before, during, and after the trip, which had some undesirable side effects that I really hated. 

Getting this long list of vaccines and medications was a reminder that in Africa we have a long list of issues that require every effort to solve, it was a reminder of the dire need to have what is represented in the iGEM motto: Local people solving local problems.

I headed to Uganda with an invitation from SynBio Africa, which is a forum for researchers, students, citizen scientists and the public, aiming to help advance synthetic biology in Africa. I headed to Uganda to attend (and help in organising)  a conference that aimed to get more people from Africa to work on solving its problems, using Synthetic Biology.

iGEM in Africa: A Long History.. A Short List

African teams have been participating in the competition, but they are just a small percentage of the total teams.

In 2018, a team from Makerere University in Uganda worked on a solution to the poor plastic waste disposal in Africa, a year later, my team from Cairo University, Egypt, addressed the issue of fresh-water scarcity, working on a solution to desalinate salty water. Teams from the continent have been working on using the advances in the field of Synthetic Biology to solve the most serious problems in their countries. The trip to Uganda was to attend an event that aimed to encourage, support, and promote current iGEM projects as well as motivate and include other teams to start working on new projects.

The event was on April 1st and 2nd, a showcase for potential African iGEM teams and for iGEM Alumni that was held at Kampala and online. Teams and individuals from different parts of the continent presented their work and/or ideas.

About 80 young scientists attended the in-person event or its online version. The event that was sponsored by NTI and organized by SynBio Africa was a chance for both new and existing iGEMers to meet and learn from each other.

All over the continent.. All the fields..

From the North to the South, and the East to the West, current, previous, and potential teams and alumni from all over the continent were represented.

Teams and alumni from Uganda, Egypt, Ghana, Tunisia, and Malawi among other countries attended. Their projects covered topics in the fields of diagnosis and therapeutics, plastic wastes, and antimicrobial resistance, among others.

The iGEM African Teams showcase was an opportunity for potential teams, alumni, and ambassadors to connect and collaborate.

Replication

Just like a single colony of bacteria could fill a large flask with millions of bacteria, a single iGEM team at an institute will have an ice ball effect! During the SynBio Africa Showcase event, the team from Cairo University shared that their participation was in part a direct result of the participation of the 2019 team, who inspired them to take part in the competition, and helped them as they have two of the 2019 team members as instructors.

The 2019 team had a similar story, another team made it in 2015 (from two universities in Egypt), and this was one reason that led to their participation.

Evolution

In the past few years, iGEM teams from Africa are not only participating, but they are also doing better than ever in the competition. The AFCM (Armed Forces College of Medicine) Team from Egypt and Pretoria-UP and WITS_CSIR from South Africa won gold medals. The teams are taking their projects to the next level, and they are not just helping others take part in the competition, but they are also moving forward with the experience they gained from their participation.

One example of this “evolution” of the teams and the members is their participation in the different initiatives by iGEM, the activities by the iGEM Entrepreneurship Program and Innovation Community (EPIC) witnessed noticeable participation from African iGEM alumni, especially in the last year.

The Community

Previous iGEM Meetups: iGEM on the Nile 2019, and Cairo Meetup 2021

The teams' showcase was not an isolated event, In 2019, iGEM African Ambassadors then Hana Abdelzaher organized a meetup for Egpytian teams (iGEM on the Nile). Two years later, an African meetup was organized in Cairo by the African Ambassadors (Alex Kyabarongo, Erikan Baluku, Sara Ghoul, and Youssef Abdelmaksoud). Some of the organizers of the 2021 meetup were attendees of the 2019 gathering. Some of the teams participating this year were just visitors of the 2021 event.

The next phase

This is not to say that the situation of Synthetic Biology and iGEM teams in Africa is good, but it is at its best. And with efforts like this showcase event, the situation is only going to get better.

People working to change the sad reality of the synbio scene in the continent are, among others, those who were once members of an iGEM team representing a university from their country and working on a solution for a problem facing their society. 2 of the in-person attendees were ambassadors to Africa (Alex and Mariam Ezzelarab), and more of those who attended online and contributed to the discussion were also ambassadors (Erikan and Farouk Abdo).. The iGEM African ambassadors are working towards raising awareness about the competition and the field, and helping teams participate in the competition.. Feel free to reach out to them here if you have any questions and let’s hope for a better future of life sciences in Africa!

The results of steps like the showcase event or the meetup might not be reflected instantaneously, but they indeed count, and those who attended the 2022 showcase event will end up being this or the next year's team members, and the ambassadors and advocates for years to come.