“Black Lives Matter and Black Research Matters”: the African Society of Human Genetics’ call to halt racism in science

Abstract

The African Society of Human Genetics (AfSHG) was formed to provide a forum for human genetics and genomics scientists in Africa to interact, network, and collaborate. This is critical to facilitate development of solutions to the public health burden of many rare and common diseases across the continent. AfSHG fully supports the Black Lives Matter movement, which is dedicated to fighting racism and ensuring that society values the lives and humanity of Black people. The AfSHG would like to add its “voice” to the public outcry against racism sparked by George Floyd’s death and to declare its commitment to ensuring that injustice and systematic racism, as well as abuse and exploitation of Africans and their biological material, are no longer tolerated. This is particularly relevant now as African genomic variation is poised to make significant contributions across several disciplines including ancestry, personalized medicine, and novel drug discovery. “Black Lives Matter and Black Research Matters” is AfSHG’s call for the global community to support halting, and reversing, the perpetuation of exploitation of African people through neocolonial malpractices in genomic research. We also propose five key ways to curb racism in science, so that we can move forward together, with a common humanity, collectively embracing scientific endeavors.

Expanding the human gut microbiome atlas of Africa

“…This can be accomplished by designing and executing large, population-representative studies that encompass a range of lifestyles, geography, and disease burden, and which collect high-quality data about these factors. Importantly, it is essential to work within local frameworks that support representative measurements from populations, facilitate input and leadership from local stakeholders, and clearly identify community needs [22][23][24][25][26] .…”