By Ojoma Akor
Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health, along with global and local institutions and researchers, has pledged to position Nigeria and the continent as hubs for translational research and healthcare solutions.
They made the commitment during the Spark Africa Translational Research Bootcamp and Conference. It was organized by the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), in partnership with the Presidential Initiative for Unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain (PVAC), a programme office of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and SPARK Global at Stanford University, California.
Translational research seeks to produce more meaningful, applicable results that directly benefit human health.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, said that strengthening translational research and science communication is critical to counter anti-science narratives and ensure that research findings translate into measurable health and economic gains.
He also pledged to support efforts to build the country’s clinical trial and research ecosystem.
He said, “So I give you that commitment, and I also encourage you to not only think about the translational research itself, but also how it’s communicated, because in this era of anti-science and all kinds of skeptics, how we communicate scientific findings also matters.
” Otherwise, the benefit of the scientific enterprise may be left on the table if we don’t communicate well enough, and an interdisciplinary approach to doing that, not only the engineers, the physicians, but also the communication experts, sociologists, should also get into the space to be able to optimize.”
The minister highlighted that Nigeria’s incredible biodiversity and that of the entire continent could be harnessed to solve global challenges.
“The antibiotics that have saved so many lives, or new pathogens that are going to emerge, or new testing capabilities that will come, new vaccines, new therapeutics, all of those would have to be developed, and so the regulators are also working on that,” he added.
Prof. Pate said the country’s health security is closely connected to the continent and the world, adding that the view is of a global Nigeria, a global Africa, and a world that is interconnected.
He said, “We don’t believe that one entity can survive by itself if there is a pandemic. God forbid if there is one, COVID was terrible, but if the highly pathogenic, highly lethal pathogen, or highly transmissible pathogen, more than COVID were to emerge, I think as humanity we have to come together to be able to actually respond to all the tools that we can get and the countermeasures that we have.”
Dr. Abdul Mukhtar, National Coordinator of the Presidential Initiative for Unlocking Healthcare Value Chain (PVAC), said research and development (R&D) is crucial in Nigeria’s healthcare reform agenda.
He said PVAC was established in 2023 with the primary goal of unlocking the health care value chain, increasing local manufacturing of health care products, creating high-quality jobs, and mobilizing resources for the country.
Dr Mukhtar said translational research is central to the initiative’s work, noting that research must address Africa’s disease burden and unmet needs.
He said, “There is a need to increase the output of research, in terms of the quality and quantity of papers produced, and more importantly, there is a need to link that research that we’re doing. There’s excellent research across our institutions in Africa. Our approach to the presidential initiative is an ecosystem framework that covers everything needed to achieve these outcomes. We are establishing the human capital base, and I’m pleased to say that PVAC, under the minister’s leadership, is launching Africa’s first-ever manufacturing academy.
This is part of the ecosystem that we’re building.”
He added that translational research is a fundamental part of the ecosystem.
” How do you move from the science, excellent science that all of you here are doing, to get to the point where you have that translation, but also taking all the ideas, all the knowledge, the information, the data from the research institutions, and putting it into what I call relevance. The science that we do should be translated into something relevant to the work, to the disease epidemiological profile that we have here,” he said.
Dr. Obi Adigwe, Director General of the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development ( NIPRID), said his organization is partnering with Stanford University to build the intellectual capacity of Nigerian and African scientists to drive innovation and ensure improved access to health and medicine security.
He said, “We can also build an economy that will sustain 1.5 billion individuals across Africa. We’ve seen people talking about why Africans should take ownership of their own research.
” So for years, we’ve abdicated the responsibility for our science and capacity building. It was clear during the last pandemic that it was unsustainable.
“Before COVID-19, the thinking was that medicines should be manufactured in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, where production costs were lower, and then shipped back to Africa via a sophisticated supply chain and logistics. But we proved them wrong. During COVID, it was realized that you need to build those capacities here in Africa.
” The work we did for COVID organics preparation from Madagascar, the work we did with Sickle Cell Disease, we have the capacity here in Africa to use our own intellectual capital, leverage our biodiversity, and solve our problems. You can’t keep waiting for people from outside Africa to come and solve your problems for you.”
Adigwe said translational science, the bridge between discovery and application, must become the rallying cry.
He said, “It is not enough to publish papers in prestigious journals or to accumulate honors. We must prove our worth by solving the problems that plague our communities, by developing vaccines, renewable energy solutions, sustainable agriculture, and equitable healthcare systems. “Collaboration must replace competition, for the challenges we face are too vast for any single laboratory, institution, or nation to overcome alone. The silos of specialization must give way to networks of shared knowledge, where physicists, biologists, engineers, and social scientists work hand in hand.”
While saying that investing in science is the most patriotic act a government can undertake, for it secures the future of its people, he said that the resources of philanthropists and development partners can amplify the impact of science, but only if directed toward translational efforts that reach the most vulnerable.
Professor Kevin Grimes, Co-Director of SPARK at Stanford University and Vice President of SPARK Global, said the programme is designed to maximise Africa’s health and economic well-being by helping researchers translate high-quality science into products and services that benefit patients and society.
“African scientists are as capable as any in the world,” Grimes said. “What they often lack is structured support and access to industry expertise. That is the gap SPARK is designed to fill.”
He said that the SPARK model, which pairs academic researchers with industry mentors, has successfully built innovative ecosystems in other regions and holds strong potential for Africa.
He said that Africa still accounts for only a tiny fraction of global research funding and output, with most studies externally funded and designed outside the continent.
Grimes lamented that Africa accounts for only about two per cent of global research and development spending, stressing the need not only to increase research output but also to link science to finance and commercialisation.
“Many groundbreaking studies never move beyond academic journals,” he said. “Science and medicine ultimately exist to save lives. That is the essence of what we do.”
