Research Areas
Crops, LivestockCountries
Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, UgandaTimeline
Start Date: 1 January 2008 | End Date: 1 December 2009Overview
The need for enhanced bioinformatics capacity as a core competency in biosciences is rapidly increasing as large volumes of data on genomes become available, and with this the demand to mine such data in support of research. Stakeholders of the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) have identified capacity building in this area as among the highest priorities to support biosciences application in agriculture. Bioinformatics is an integral part of much of research in modern biology, medicine, veterinary and agricultural sciences. Basic requisites for bioinformatics applications are databases, analysis tools and expert knowledge. The most well known databases are those containing information on the genomes of different species, including the bovine, horse and chicken and several crop genomes such as rice. A key need in this new and rapidly developing field is adequate number of skilled human people. In order to provide access to current knowledge and information technology tools to support bioinformatics, genomics and immunoinformatics, this project will further develop collaboration with other CGIAR institutes, regional Institutes and Universities and International entities such as SLU and Linnaeus Centre for Bioinformatics.
The objectives of the project are:
1. To provide local and synchronized access to data and analysis tools independent of network resources
2. To establish a system for automatic update of genomics databases
3. To organize courses and training material to support ‘training of trainers’ activities at national and regional levels
The proposed project will be based on identified priority needs of African scientists. An important output of the project will be the development of linkages between African scientists with a global bioinformatics network.
