DrosAfrica: Building an African biomedical research community using Drosophila

The impact that research has on shaping the future of societies is perhaps as significant as never before. One of the problems for most regions in Africa is poor quality and quantity of research-based education, as well as low level of funding. Hence, African researchers produce only around one percent of the world's research. We believe that research with Drosophila melanogaster can contribute to changing that. As seen before in other places, Drosophila can be used as a powerful and cost-effective model system to scale-up and improve both academia and research output. The DrosAfrica project was founded to train and establish a connected community of researchers using Drosophila as a model system to investigate biomedical problems in Africa. Since founding, the project has trained eighty scientists from numerous African countries, and continues to grow. Here, we describe the DrosAfrica project, its conception and its mission. We also give detailed insights into DrosAfrica's approaches to achieve its aims, as well as future perspectives, and opportunities beyond Africa.In addition to the organizations and institutions already thanked in the main text, we are thankful to CamBioScience for fundraising and discussions, the Department of Zoology and the University of Cambridge for support, St John’s, Emmanuel and Pembroke Colleges (Cambridge, UK) for funds, our DrosAfrica webpage manager Dr. J.E. Casal (University of Cambridge, UK), and our collaborator Dr. D. Foronda for endless support in many aspects of DrosAfrica.Peer Reviewe