̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Cambridge Africa

Scientists publish first real-world data from Africa looking at immune response to AZ/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine

cjb250 — Wed, 11 May 2022 08:02:50 +0000

In a pre-print – which has yet to be peer-reviewed* – scientists from Nigeria and the UK analysed data from 140 healthcare workers at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research and Federal Medical Center, Ebute Metta, and two private hospitals in Lagos. All participants had received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered between Jan and July 2021, with 12 weeks between doses.

According to the World Health Organization, around two-thirds of people in Africa are thought to have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, with more than 250,000 deaths. Yet, since the rollout of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in mid-2021, there has been no real world data on its effectiveness.

Vaccine rollout across the African continent has been mixed, with less than one in six (16%) of the eligible population receiving both doses and only around one in 75 (1.3%) receiving a booster dose.

̽��ֱ��team tested the participants, looking for evidence of antibodies specifically found in individuals who had previously been infected, rather than those raised by the vaccine. They initially found that 62 participants tested positive (44%).

In a subset of 49, they then tested serum samples taken from volunteers against pseudoviruses – synthetic viruses that mimic the behaviour of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, but which are safe to study in the laboratory – to see whether vaccinated individuals were able to neutralise the virus.

̽��ֱ��team found that on average, one month after vaccination the Delta and Omicron variants required a 4.7-fold and 9.6-fold increase in the concentration of serum antibody in order to neutralise the virus, compared to the ‘wild type’ virus (the original strain). This indicates likely poor protection from infection by the Omicron variant, despite two doses of vaccine and infection before or during the study.

To look for evidence of vaccine breakthrough – where the virus is able to infect vaccinated individuals – the team looked at those individuals who had shown no evidence of previous infection and found that 14% became newly-infected between one and three months post-vaccination. This occurred during the Delta wave, and participants showed excellent immunity against Delta but persistently suboptimal immunity to Omicron.

Dr Adam Abdullahi, a Cambridge-Africa Research Fellow from the Institute of Human Virology, Abuja, Nigeria, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Despite being the most widely-deployed vaccine, until now there’s been very little information on how effective the AstraZeneca vaccine is at protecting people in Africa from Omicron, nor even on levels of infections before and following vaccination using accurate lab tests.

“In our study, among healthcare workers in Nigeria, we found that nearly 50% had been infected prior to their first dose of the vaccine in early 2021.”

Professor Babatunde Lawal Salako, Director of the Nigeria Institute of Medical Research, Lagos, said: “There was some good news, in that the AstraZeneca vaccine was effective at protecting people against the virus, at least initially. But with the emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants, we were beginning to see the ability to neutralise the viruses fall, and almost one in five individuals who had received two doses were infected in the three months following vaccination. This could lead to severe disease in those with suppressed immune systems or who are medically vulnerable.”

Professor Ravi Gupta, lead investigator from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge added: “Given recent data suggesting that a third ‘booster’ dose with an mRNA vaccine increases and broadens protection against Omicron, we urgently need more longer term follow-up studies in west Africa, including trials of booster doses. If we are going to control this virus, we will only do so by ensuring that everyone eligible is protected against current and future variants that may be more pathogenic and severe.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded by NIMR, Lagos, Nigeria, Wellcome and the Africa Research Excellence Fund.

Reference
Abdullahi, A, Oladele, D, Kemp, SA, et al. Prior SARS COV-2 infection and immune responses to AZD1222 in West Africa. Pre-print released 5 May 2022

Updated 19 Oct 2022: ̽��ֱ��research has now been peer-reviewed and published in Nature Communications* (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33792-x).

Scientists have released the first real-world data from Africa on the effectiveness of two doses of AstraZeneca/ChaAd0x-1 COVID-19 vaccination, showing that while protective against SARS-CoV-2, immunity against the Delta and Omicron variants was lower, even in the context of prior infection or infection after vaccination.

Despite being the most widely-deployed vaccine, until now there’s been very little information on how effective the AstraZeneca vaccine is at protecting people in Africa from Omicron

Adam Abdullahi

Jordi Sort Soler

3d digital image corona virus on planet Earth in Central Africa with clouds

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Surviving birth

lw355 — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 09:00:28 +0000

Researchers at one of the busiest maternity hospitals in the world aim to help more women survive complications giving birth.

̽��ֱ��Facebook post that launched a thousand shields (and counting)

lw355 — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 07:30:53 +0000

Cambridge researchers are supporting a project to 3D-print face shields and face masks in Malawi. ̽��ֱ��work is helping them create a 'blueprint' for using digital fabrication technologies in future emergencies.

Tackling COVID-19: Professor James Wood

jg533 — Thu, 28 May 2020 08:15:12 +0000

This article is part of a series in which we speak to some of the many Cambridge researchers tackling COVID-19. For other articles about our latest COVID-19-related research, click here.

Before COVID-19, I split my time between my Vet School office and endless meetings in the central ̽��ֱ�� and in London, including at Defra and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Now I’m based in my conservatory at home, which oscillates between freezing cold and too hot! I seem to have even more meetings now, by Webex, Zoom, Skype and Teams. Talking to people on the telephone is a great release from the two dimensional world many of us now live in.

I’m organising the Vet School’s research and policy responses to the epidemic, and working with colleagues in Cambridge Infectious Diseases, one of the ̽��ֱ��’s Interdisciplinary Research Centres, to do the same. I’m also supporting a total revision of the veterinary course examination and assessment - whilst trying to continue with my own multidisciplinary research in infection dynamics and disease control. And I’m providing a weekly hour-long ‘phone-an-expert’ service on the Jeremy Sallis Show on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

I study zoonotic diseases, which are infections that spread from animals to humans. My research is mostly based in sub-Saharan Africa and India. In Ethiopia and India I’ve been working on bovine tuberculosis, and in Ghana I’m studying viruses that come from bats - like COVID-19 probably did - in order to reduce the chances of spread to human populations.

There is an almost total lack of necessary health infrastructure in low and middle-income countries. This may result in massive mortality from COVID-19 in these places, and it is certainly likely to further emphasise health and wealth inequalities. I think this is a really major challenge in addressing the pandemic globally.

I suspect that the pandemic will further raise interest in zoonotic infections and help us to do more about them. We need far larger structural programmes to address the global challenges from these diseases. This has been a colossally neglected area. I hope that future epidemics like this can be averted through better preparation and policies based on scientific evidence. We’ve been saying this for the 15 years or so that we’ve been working on zoonotic bat viruses. Hopefully more people will listen now.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge research community has stepped up to this challenge in so many ways. Vaccination work has been a focus of studies within the Veterinary School. Amazing amounts of PPE were provided to Addenbrooke’s Hospital from Cambridge’s science departments. A new rapid COVID-19 test came from a Cambridge spinout. Colleagues in the Department of Engineering have been working to improve access to ventilators, and infection researchers have been supporting laboratory setups across sub-Saharan Africa with support from the Cambridge-Africa programme.

There’s a huge ongoing contribution from Cambridge’s infectious diseases community. I’m Co-Chair of Cambridge Infectious Diseases, which has been supporting researchers with new COVID-19 research projects and establishing joint interdisciplinary seminar programmes across the ̽��ֱ��. We’ve also helped the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) develop its ‘Cambridge on call’ programme, which connects selected ‘Policy Fellows’ to Cambridge experts for support in developing policy responses to the crisis. And we’re working with partners to produce guidelines, for many different bodies, to reduce the risk of pandemic spread through trade in live animals.

When this is over I’m looking forward to a holiday away from home with the family, and seeing my isolated mother. It would also be great to reinstate plans to bike across the Alps from Annecy to Nice with a friend, although I’m not quite sure how that’s all going to happen any time soon!

James Wood is Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science, and Head of Department of Veterinary Medicine. Listen to his overview of infectious disease modelling on Cambridge's Centre for Science and Policy podcast: Science, Policy & Pandemics Episode One.

How you can support Cambridge’s COVID-19 research

“Cambridge’s infectious diseases community is making a huge contribution to tackling the pandemic,” says Professor James Wood. He leads several large-scale programmes at the ̽��ֱ�� that rely on his research expertise: infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans. This is, he says, a research area that was ‘colossally neglected’ before COVID-19 emerged.

James Wood enjoying amazing freshly roasted Ethiopian coffee in a traditional coffee house in Sebeta, during a field trip prior to the COVID-19 pandemic

Yes

Meeting local needs: how the Fens can learn from research in Africa

cjb250 — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 09:59:00 +0000

When Dr Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi first arrived in Africa in 2003, the situation regarding HIV – her specialism – was “just awful”, she says. We’re all familiar with the devastating images of emaciated and very sick African patients dying in hospital wards, but to see this first hand, she says, was truly shocking.

At the time, antiretroviral therapy (ART), which in developed countries were helping patients manage their condition and limit the spread of the disease, were not widely available in Africa. People were dying from opportunistic infections which most of us were not at risk of or could fend off with adequate treatment.

She had been practising as a doctor in London and had seen HIV treatment transformed. No longer did it carry a death sentence; for the majority of people, if diagnosed early enough, it could now be managed as a chronic condition, like for example diabetes.

Seeing and hearing about the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, which carries by far the greatest global burden of the disease, Parkes-Ratanshi headed to Uganda to carry out a PhD at the UK Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Institute. She was looking at the treatment of cryptococcal meningitis, a potentially life-threatening fungal infection of the brain and spinal cord in Masaka in the rural South West of the country.

Turning the tide

Parkes-Ratanshi saw the tide begin to turn on HIV. Masaka Regional Referral Hospital and ̽��ֱ��AIDS Support Organisation (an NGO) where she worked were among the first to trial the rollout of ART. ̽��ֱ��government and the president had recognised the severity of the problem very quickly and sought help from the international community. It also promoted public health messages around ‘ABC’ – abstinence, be faithful, wear a condom. At its peak, around 15% of Ugandans were HIV-positive – this figure has now fallen to just over 7%.

Nowadays, a person living with HIV in Uganda should be able to manage their HIV as in the West. In fact, the national and international efforts to control the epidemic have been so effective that a cohort of infected individuals has been recruited to help researchers study how people live with their chronic infection.

“We used to look at cohorts to try to understand what patients were dying from,” says Parkes-Ratanshi, “but now we have patients who have been on ART for over ten years. They’re no longer dying from infections related to a poor immune system, but face other issues such as treatment fatigue, stigma and non-communicable diseases like cardiovascular disease and cancers.”

Parkes-Ratanshi is working with the cohort as part of her involvement with the Ugandan Academy for Health Innovation and Impact, of which she is Director. ̽��ֱ��Academy is a joint initiative between Janssen, the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson, the Ugandan Ministry of Health, the Infectious Diseases Institute in Uganda and the Johnson & Johnson Corporate Citizenship Trust to address unmet needs in HIV and TB. It is there, she says, to ensure that the outcomes of clinical research are embedded in health policies that benefit the population. “It’s more translational than translational! It’s not lab to clinic, it’s clinic to population.”

One of its flagship programmes is Call for Life™, a randomised controlled trial which aims to promote healthy behaviours and adherence to drug regimens amongst the HIV cohort through the use of mobile phone technology. Participants receive a call at certain times of the day and are offered advice on adherence, health tips and reminders to attend clinic. This simple, cost-effective intervention could help patients manage their infection without over-reliance on the country’s limited resources.

“ ̽��ֱ��thing I’m particularly interested in is this concept of ‘differentiated care’,” she adds. “How can we offer a light touch for those that are doing well and are taking their drugs well and responding well to treatment, and save the resources for those that really need extra help – they’ve only just been diagnosed, or they’re adolescents or pregnant or kids, for example.”

̽��ֱ��Academy is about more than just conducting research, however. It is about providing much needed skills and training to researchers across Africa. It works with the Infectious Diseases Institute,which has provided training through short courses to some 16,000 clinicians and scientists across Africa, and is developing a series of online courses using a smartphone and desktop platform so that scientists/ clinicians who are unable to attend in person can still benefit.

Learning from each other

In 2015, Parkes-Ratanshi returned to the UK and took up a position as a lecturer at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health. She has not given up her ties to Uganda – she is still Director of the Academy – but felt this was the right time to increase links with the UK. There were, she says, two main reasons that influenced her decision.

In Uganda, HIV is treated using a standardised approach using national pathways and limited, but effective, treatments. If you’re a patient with HIV, you get the first line treatment recommended by the Ministry of Health and WHO; if and when that fails, you receive the second line treatment, and so on. In the UK, however, treatment is individualised to a patient so that they receive maximum benefit with minimum side effects. “In order to know what the options are, I need to be clinically ‘on the ball’,” she says. “I need to be up to date with clinical skills from an international perspective to know what the opportunities are for research and clinical care in Uganda.”

But it is the strengths of Cambridge’s research networks – Cambridge Institute of Public Health, Cambridge-Africa and Cambridge Infectious Diseases to name but a few – that hold real appeal.

“When you’re working in a resource-poor setting like Uganda, you are thinking about the immediate problems facing you and there aren’t huge amounts of basic science and translational medical research. There are initiatives like the Ugandan Academy and Cambridge-Africa that are looking to change this, trying to bring up a generation of basic scientists, but at the moment, that capacity isn’t there.

“If we’re going to think of ways to benefit the widest possible group, we’re going to need to make collaborations with other researchers in other areas. For somebody like me, those cross-university networks are vitally important. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to solve problems for our resource-limited environments.”

Parkes-Ratanshi is now working with Professor Carol Brayne, Director of the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, to look at how evidence generated in a well-resourced part of the world might be linked with that from lower-resource settings. In the spirit of initiatives such as Cambridge-Africa, this isn’t about making assumptions about research priorities and carrying them out on particular populations. “It’s very much about community participation,” she explains, “It’s about going to the communities and asking them ‘What are your priorities around ageing? What are you interested in? What’s concerning you on a daily basis?’ and then co-developing research that’s relevant to them.”

One might assume that when she refers to “lower-resource settings”, she means Africa. Not necessarily. “There’s great inequality even within the UK,” she says. And so, while they have identified sites in Uganda and South Africa, as well as in Bali, they are also looking at areas in the Fenlands around Cambridge, where deprivation levels are high.

And in a sense, this is one of the real benefits of encouraging collaborations between geographically and economically diverse areas of the world: everyone has something to give, everyone has something to learn. “When you’re in a poorly-resourced setting, you generate ideas and innovations that might help in a resource-rich setting as well as your own. And who knows, some of the ideas that come out of this might be helpful in the future as the UK itself becomes more resource-limited.”

Dr Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi is used to working in resource-poor settings. She spent over a decade on the frontline fighting HIV and AIDS in Uganda. Now in Cambridge, she plans to focus on working in areas of deprivation – in Africa and south east Asia, but also much closer to home.

We used to look at cohorts to try to understand what patients were dying from, but now... they’re no longer dying from infections, but face other issues such as treatment fatigue and stigma

Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi

Robert F D Gilchrist (Bobbygee1952)

Safe sex billboard, Kabale, Uganda

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Carol Ibe: Making training for African researchers affordable

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 08:50:35 +0000

Carol Ibe, a Gates Cambridge Scholar who was born in the USA but grew up in Nigeria, is not only doing a PhD in Plant Sciences, but is also running her own non-profit organisation to help train future African scientists and promote joined up thinking on sustainable development.

Carol set up the JR Biotek Foundation in 2013, although the idea for setting up the organisation came to her while she was doing her first masters in the States in 2006. A year later she had launched her first training programme in biotechnology and biomedicine for students and laboratory scientists in Africa. She wanted to ensure that those participating paid minimal costs so the training could be open to as many research students in Africa as possible, and so she worked with partners to keep costs down. More than 60 people applied for the training workshop from 11 countries in Africa. Even though costs were very low, many could not attend because they lacked funding.

Carol had already completed two masters and worked for several years as both a molecular biologist and a research biologist before setting up the Foundation. Although she was working hard on the organisation, she realised she wanted to continue her academic research so she applied to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and tailored her research proposal to the work she is doing with her organisation.

“I started to think what area of training and capacity building could have the most impact in the continent,” she said. “Agriculture is key to Africa’s development because it is the largest employer of labour. Food insecurity remains a major problem. Soil conditions are deteriorating very rapidly and people are suffering on a daily basis. We need to train a new generation of scientists who can improve agricultural productivity and human health in Africa.”

Her PhD focuses on rice, the staple food of a large part of the world, and how to produce quality rice in places where there are poor soil and climate conditions. “Factors such as lack of funding and new technologies, poor infrastructure and poor market access hinder farmers from producing rice with higher yield and quality. If we can empower smallholder farmers to produce and sell more we can reduce poverty,” said Carol.

While she has been at Cambridge, Carol has been busy not just with her research but with forging partnerships which help achieve the goals she has set for the Foundation.

In April, the Foundation is holding the first African Diaspora Biotech Summit. ̽��ֱ��event will take place in Cambridge and will bring African graduate students, researchers and bio-industry leaders together to debate how research capacity, innovation and commercialisation can be strengthened across the continent.

It will bring together 70 African diaspora delegates from different disciplines and professions, including biotechnology and applied biosciences, policy, sustainable development and bio-entrepreneurship and will include a keynote address from Professor Lucy J. Ogbadu, Director-General of the National Biotechnology Development Agency at Nigeria’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

̽��ֱ��summit will look at areas such as the role of modern bio-technologies in improving agricultural productivity and food security in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050 and the need to reform Africa’s tertiary education system to make it globally competitive. Carol says that too often previous initiatives developed outside Africa have failed to meet the need for which they are developed due to “a limited understanding of the depth of the problems facing African nations and the African people”.

In the lead-up to the summit, JR Biotek is running a Molecular Laboratory Training Workshop for Africa-based agricultural research scientists and academics. It will be held in collaboration with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's Department of Plant Sciences. Eight PhD students will be awarded scholarships to attend the workshop and the Summit, funded by the BBSRC Global Challenge Research Fund and Trinity College, Cambridge. During the Summit, the Foundation will also hold the NextGen Africa Bioinnovation Pitch Competition which is designed to identify and celebrate bio-innovations made to improve lives and systems and to promote sustainable development in Africa.

Carol says: “I want to provide affordable quality training so scientists in Africa can be successful in their research projects. I know what they need because I have been there myself. I am also hoping that African governments and their development partners will start investing in research and development across all sectors in the continent, especially agriculture and healthcare because that’s how innovation, which we so desperately need in Africa, can come about.”

Do you have to choose between an academic career and activism? Gates Cambridge Scholar Carol Ibe is one of an increasing number of students are choosing to keep a foot in both camps.

I want to provide affordable quality training so scientists in Africa can be successful in their research projects. I know what they need because I have been there myself

Carol Ibe

JR Biotek Foundation

Molecular Lab Techniques Training

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Multiplier effect: the African PhD students who will grow African research

amb206 — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 11:15:37 +0000

“Africa needs a million new PhD researchers over the next decade.” It’s a huge figure. Professor David Dunne uses it to explain the scale of need in Africa for a new generation of scholars who will pioneer sustainable solutions to many of the continent’s challenges.

“There are world-class academics in Africa,” he explains, “but not enough to train and mentor all the young researchers that Africa needs to maintain and accelerate its progress. This is where Cambridge and other leading international universities can help, by making expertise and facilities available to help bridge this mentorship gap.”

Dunne is Director of the Cambridge-Africa Programme, a ̽��ֱ�� initiative that for the past eight years has been building collaborative links between Cambridge and Africa. ̽��ֱ��model is centred on Cambridge researchers helping to mentor young African researchers in their African universities and research Institutions. This contributes to research capacity building in Africa but also benefits Cambridge by widening the experience and opportunities for its researchers and students.

However, that stark fact remains – a great many more new researchers are needed. With this in mind, a new Cambridge-Africa PhD studentship scheme began to enrol PhD students last year from all over Africa – five per year, every year for five years. “It’s at least a beginning,” says Dunne. “We want this programme to grow in Cambridge, and other universities.”

One criterion is that the prospective student must be studying issues that are priorities for Africa. ̽��ֱ��research interests of the current students are broad: from urban growth to poverty, business associations to sustainable industries, infectious disease to post-conflict citizenship.

Taskeen Adam

Taskeen Adam is one of the PhD students. She’d worked as an electrical engineer for two years when she decided that she wanted to use her skills to bring about social change. “What attracted me to engineering was the challenge of solving technical problems. But my real passion is for humanitarian issues and the need to create quality education for all.”

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly declared access to the internet as a basic human right. But figures from 2014 gathered for Taskeen’s home country of South Africa showed that more than 4,000 schools had no access to electricity and 77% of schools had no computers. Many thousands of children were missing out on the chance to learn the skills needed to make a better life.

Her research is enabling her to look at the educational opportunities afforded by the internet, in particular the potential of decolonised African MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) as a means for delivering inclusive educational programmes to the most marginalised learners in South Africa. She’s keen to develop an online educational framework adapted for, and relevant to, communities in developing countries.

Taskeen completed her first degree at the ̽��ֱ�� of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. On graduating, and while working full time, she pioneered an initiative called ‘Solar Powered Learning’ to give students in rural areas access to technology that was both low cost and environmentally friendly.

̽��ֱ��pilot project won Taskeen accolades. She was listed among South Africa’s Mail & Guardian’s top 200 Young South Africans for 2014. This gave her the confidence to embark on a career that would use her engineering skills in ways that could help to bridge inequalities.

As part of her Master’s research, she spent two weeks in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, where she visited schools benefiting from a national scheme to equip every child with a laptop. It was clear that this commendable programme was failing to enhance learning. Although resources were being provided, there was a lack of focus on maintenance skills, curriculum integration and teacher professional development. In many cases, the children were more comfortable using the laptops than were their teachers.

“My trip demonstrated the mismatch between the deliverables and the outcomes of the scheme. ̽��ֱ��focus was on technology deployment, rather than on improving educational attainment,” she says. “Many African governments seem to be following a similar path, and I hope that, by using the resources, networks and expertise here in Cambridge, I might eventually be able to influence policy changes at the intersection of education and technology back in Africa.”

Richmond Juvenile Ehwi

Richmond Juvenile Ehwi also hopes to take his skills and expertise back to his home country, Ghana. He has just arrived in Cambridge to start his PhD in Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy. After his first degree at Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah ̽��ֱ�� of Science and Technology, he worked as a research consultant and estate manager.

Moving to Ghana’s capital city, he became interested in the changes he saw in the property market. “Plush Western-designed detached houses, apartments and gated communities are springing up and I wondered what the future would be like for Ghana’s urban landscape. While this development mirrors Accra’s integration into the globalised city concept, accompanying this trend are social, economic, environmental and cultural costs.”

As Western lifestyles become increasingly popular, the older-style family compounds associated with traditional Ghanaian culture are declining, even in rural areas. “With literacy rates and standards of living rising, households are demanding greater privacy and better sanitation which, in most traditional compound houses, are greatly compromised,” he explains.

In the West, gated communities are often seen in a negative light: they are associated with segregation, racial polarisation and social exclusion. While accepting the realities of this criticism, Richmond seeks to facilitate a balanced discussion and inspire evidence-based planning policies.

He suggests that, as new gated residences develop in the suburbs, there can be both material and social benefits for surrounding areas. “In Ghana, the new gated communities tend to be multiracial rather than segregated according to race or nationality. ̽��ֱ��ability to pay for your house is what counts, not what you do or what your ethnicity is. Gated developments offer the security and services that most people aspire to,” he says.

Entire neighbourhoods can benefit from the expectations of the owners of the new properties, he explains: “It’s misleading to think of gated communities as isolated enclaves. People who live in them are not completely cut off from society. They travel to work, to malls and markets, to church services. These public spaces facilitate social interaction. Also, better-off households offer employment for gardeners, drivers and care givers – and help to raise incomes and opportunities.”

His long-term plan is to create an Urban Study Research Centre back in Accra, and to take back a deeper understanding of the interplay of economic factors with social and cultural issues in urban development.

̽��ֱ��multiplier effect

Dunne points to such plans as an indicator of the promise of the Cambridge-Africa PhD studentship scheme. “We are training 25 Cambridge-Africa scholars. It’s a small number compared with the overall need. But these researchers are a starting point. They will train other researchers and the expertise will multiply back in Africa.”

He adds: “It’s not just that Africa needs research and researchers for its own use. ̽��ֱ��world needs African researchers. We can’t have a situation where 14% of the world’s population – living on a continent with unique culture, diversity and environment – contributes less than 1% of published research output. ̽��ֱ��world needs the unique knowledge and perspective that African researchers can provide to solve our shared global challenges.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge-Africa PhD studentship scheme is funded by the ̽��ֱ�� and the Cambridge Trust.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Taskeen Adam and Richmond Juvenile Ehwi are part of a PhD programme that’s enrolling five African students per year for five years, to help train world-class researchers for Africa.

̽��ֱ��world needs African researchers. We can’t have a situation where 14% of the world’s population – living on a continent with unique culture, diversity and environment – contributes less than 1% of published research output.

David Dunne

Nick Saffell

Taskeen Adam and Richmond Juvenile Ehwi

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Of cabbages and cows: increasing agricultural yields in Africa

lw355 — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 11:17:32 +0000

̽��ֱ��humble cabbage, universally despised by British schoolchildren, has found unexpected popularity on another continent. But just as the people of Ghana have developed an appetite – and a market – for this leafy green, so too has something else: a virus carried by aphids that causes the cabbages to wilt and die

By contrast, a parasite that emaciates cattle across sub-Saharan Africa has been around for thousands of years but continues to take its toll on certain species of the animals it infects. Prominent ribs are the frequent hallmarks of trypanosomiasis – caused by the presence of a cunning parasite that evades the animal’s immune system by periodically changing its protein ‘coat’.

Meanwhile, farmers in Ethiopia are turning away from the traditional zebu cattle towards breeds that produce greater quantities of milk. As a result they are exposing their herds – and themselves – to increasing levels of tuberculosis (TB) that are brought about by intensified animal husbandry practices.

What links cabbages and cows are three programmes that hope to connect fundamental research with improving farm yields, and in so doing contribute to solving a looming pan-African problem. More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. And more people means a requirement for more food.

Ethiopia, for example, has the largest livestock population in Africa but, with a growing population and increasing urbanisation, even its 53 million cattle are not enough. And now efforts to intensify farming in the country are bringing a significant health concern. “ ̽��ֱ��new breeds are more vulnerable than zebu to bovine TB,” explains Professor James Wood from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “This may have health implications for those who work with and live alongside infected cattle, and also raises concerns about transmission to areas with previously low TB.”

Wood leads a £2.9 million research programme, ETHICOBOTS, which is looking at the feasibility of control strategies, including cattle vaccination. ̽��ֱ��programme combines partners in eight Ethiopian and UK institutions, and brings together veterinary scientists, epidemiologists, geneticists, immunologists and social scientists. “We need this mix because we are not only asking how effective strategies will be, but also whether farmers will accept them, and what the consequences are for prosperity and wellbeing.”

̽��ֱ��difference that increasing productivity can have on farmers’ livelihoods is not lost on an insect expert at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana, Dr Ken Fening, who is working on another food-related research project. Cabbages are not indigenous to the continent but have become a major cash crop for Ghanaian farmers and an important source of income for traders to markets and hotels.

“A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family,” he says. Recently, however, fields of stunted, yellowing, wilting cabbages, their leaves curled and dotted with mould, have become an all too familiar and devastating sight for the farmers of Ghana.

From his field station base in Kpong, Ghana, Fening works closely with smallholder farmers on pest control strategies. Two years ago they started reporting that a new disease was attacking their crops. “It seemed to be associated with massive infestations of pink and green aphids,” says Fening, “and from my studies of the way insects interact with many different vegetables, I’m familiar with the types of damage they can cause.”

Farmers were typically seeing the total loss of their crops and he realised that the devastation couldn’t just be caused by sap-sucking insects. Despite no previous reports of viral diseases affecting cabbage crops in Ghana, the symptoms suggested a viral pathogen.

With funding through the CAPREx programme, Fening began work with Cambridge plant biologist Dr John Carr. ̽��ֱ��pair collected samples of cabbage plants in Ghana showing signs of disease, and also aphids on the diseased plants. Back in Cambridge, Fening used screening techniques including a type of DNA ‘fingerprinting’ to identify the aphid species, and sophisticated molecular biology methods to try to identify the offending virus.

“Aphids are a common carrier of plant-infecting viruses,” explains Carr, whose research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of the £16 million SCPRID (Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development) initiative. “ ̽��ֱ��‘usual suspects’ are turnip mosaic virus and cauliflower mosaic virus, which affect cabbages in Europe and the US.”

“We found that two different species of aphids, pink and green, were generally found on the diseased cabbages,” says Fening. “It turned out this was the first record of the green aphid species, Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach), ever being seen in Ghana.” ̽��ֱ��pink aphid was identified as Myzus persicae (Sulzer).

What’s more, the virus was not what Carr expected, and work is now ongoing to identify the culprit. ̽��ֱ��sooner it can be characterised, the sooner sustainable crop protection strategies can be developed to prevent further spread of the disease not only in Ghana, but also in other countries in the region.

Another researcher who hopes that eradication strategies will be the outcome of her research project is Dr Theresa Manful. Like Fening, she is a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana and a CAPREx fellow. She has been working with Cambridge biochemist Professor Mark Carrington on African animal trypanosomiasis.

̽��ֱ��trypanosome that causes the disease is carried by the tsetse fly, which colonises vast swathes of sub-Saharan Africa. “This is a major constraint to cattle rearing in Africa,” she explains. “Although trypanosomiasis is also a disease of humans, the number of cases is low, and the more serious concerns about the disease relate to the economic impact on agricultural production.”

Carrington has worked for a quarter of a century on the parasite that causes the disease. He understands how the organism evades the immune system of the animal by changing its coat proteins so as to remain ‘invisible’.

“When you first start working on these parasites you are enamoured with the molecular mechanisms, which we now know a huge amount about,” he says. “But then when you look at the effect on large animals like cows you realise that there is almost nothing known about the dynamics of an infection, and even whether an infection acquired at an early age persists for its lifetime.”

Manful and Carrington set about testing herds in Ghana. They discovered that several trypanosome species can be found in the cattle at one time and that nearly all cattle were infected most of the time.

For Manful, one of the important gains has been the ability to expand the research in Ghana: “I now have a fully functional lab and can do DNA extraction and analysis in Ghana – I don’t have to bring samples to Cambridge. We are teaching students from five Ghanaian institutions the diagnostic methods.” She and Carrington have been recently funded through a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Africa Award to continue their work.

“Agriculture faces increasing challenges,” adds Carr. “Bioscience is playing a crucial part in developing ways to mitigate pest impact and reduce the spread of parasites.

“We want to ensure not only that every harvest is successful, but also that it’s maximally successful.”

ETHICOBOTS is funded under the Zoonoses and Emerging Livestock Systems (ZELS) programme, a research initiative in the UK jointly funded by six research council and government bodies. Dr Ken Fening and Dr Theresa Manful were funded by the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and ̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, through the Cambridge-Africa Programme.

Images: top: cabbage aphids (credit: Dr Ken Fening); bottom: cattle in Ghana (credit: Dr Theresa Manful and Professor Mark Carrington).

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields.

A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family

Ken Fening

Hendrik Terbeck

Greengrocer at Arusha Market

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Cambridge Africa

Scientists publish first real-world data from Africa looking at immune response to AZ/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine

*Updated 19 Oct 2022: ̽��ֱ��research has now been peer-reviewed and published in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33792-x).

Surviving birth

̽��ֱ��Facebook post that launched a thousand shields (and counting)

Tackling COVID-19: Professor James Wood

This article is part of a series in which we speak to some of the many Cambridge researchers tackling COVID-19. For other articles about our latest COVID-19-related research, click here.

How you can support Cambridge’s COVID-19 research

Meeting local needs: how the Fens can learn from research in Africa

Turning the tide

Learning from each other

Carol Ibe: Making training for African researchers affordable

Multiplier effect: the African PhD students who will grow African research

Taskeen Adam

Richmond Juvenile Ehwi

̽��ֱ��multiplier effect

Of cabbages and cows: increasing agricultural yields in Africa

Updated 19 Oct 2022: ̽��ֱ��research has now been peer-reviewed and published in Nature Communications* (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33792-x).