Making sure that data about diseases are not just of the highest quality and can be
used by others has become a priority for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention (Africa CDC), especially following the 2023 launch of Africa’s first
pathogen data-sharing platform, known as Agari.

With this in mind, the organisation in December hosted its second data-curation
workshop for the year, hosted at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Drawing
participants from around Africa, the workshop follows up on a first round of training in
June this year, also hosted in partnership with the National Centre for Biotechnology
Information (NCBI) in the US.

The aim of the workshop is to create capacity in data verification and validation, to
ensure that it can be used optimally in public health. The Africa CDC has described
data curation as a key component of its Agari database, aka the African Pathogen
Data Sharing and Archive Platform.

Presenters at the latest workshop included Prof Alan Christoffels of the South African
National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) of the University of the Western Cape
(UWC) and the international Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology
(PHA4GE), as well as other PHA4GE members.