A hands-on training course in Viral Bioinformatics and Genomics attended by participants from 13 countries across Africa was held at the Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere University, Campus , Kampala from the 23rd – 28th June 2019. The course was organized by the College of Natural Sciences (CoNAS led by Charles Masembe), Makerere University in collaboration with MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (led by Sreenu Vattipally), and supported by the Wellcome Trust and African Union Commission.
The course provided a working knowledge of viral genome sequence analysis and interpretation of genomics data generated from large scale sequencing platforms; and establishment of networks for development of future collaborative projects. The countries represented at the training included: Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Republic of South Africa, Tanzania, Senegal, Cameroon, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Botswana. The instructors and speakers at the course were drawn from Uganda, United Kingdom, Kenya and Tanzania.