25. Engineering Biology in Africa w/ Geoffrey Otim

In this episode, we interview Geoffrey Otim, founder and CEO of SynBio Africa and founder of iGEM Makarere, the first iGEM team in East Africa. We discuss the unique health, agricultural, climate, biosecurity, and energy challenges being tackled by the emerging engineering biology community in Africa. We also talk about his policy advocacy, African Union-led initiatives, and the cultural, political, and funding headwinds faced by African scientists.

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Episode transcripts are the unedited output from Whisper and likely contain errors.

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to EBRCN Translation. We are a group of graduate students and postdocs working to bring you conversations with members of the engineering biology community. I'm Andrew Hunt, an incoming postdoc in David Baker's lab at the University of Washington. And I'm Ross Jones, a postdoc in Peter Zanstra's group at the University of British Columbia. Today we're joined by Jeffrey Otin, founder and CEO of SynbioAfrica, a forum for academic students, scientists, policymakers, and the general public to promote the development of synthetic biology across Africa. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you so much. I'm grateful for this opportunity to share some of my work going on down in Africa here in the area of synthetic biology. I'm the founder and CEO of SynbioAfrica, which is a platform for growing the community of synthetic biologists in Africa, and as well as advancing the uptake of synthetic biology in Africa to sort of some of the challenging situations that we have in Africa, especially in health, agriculture, and environment. I'm really happy to be here and looking forward to further discussion with you. Yeah, thanks so much for joining him, and we're both really excited about this one. So to get us started with this, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to starting synthetic biology Africa? How did you first get interested in synthetic biology, and what are you sort of currently working on, both with respect to SynbioAfrica and in your own research? Yes, thank you so much. Myself, I have a background training in molecular biology and biotechnology at master's level. I also have another background training in international affairs and diplomacy, and also to enhance my management capability to drive SynbioAfrica. I also have advanced postgraduate diploma in health management and leadership. So all these are some of the supporting factors for me to drive SynbioAfrica towards the common goal that we are targeting. I've already said SynbioAfrica is an initiative that was started way back in 2018. A key driver for establishing SynbioAfrica is, first of all, to be a center of excellence in synthetic biology research, education, and also championing biosecurity and biosafety aspect, because you cannot do synthetic biology research without having concepts of biosafety and biosecurity addressed. So we are focusing on having leadership on that. Also, we want to champion some of the innovative ideas and technologies that can lead to, you know, addressing some of the challenges that we have in Africa, especially innovations to address food security, and also health, because a lot of ailments we have in Africa. So we're using some of these synthetic biology technology to address some of those issues and also environmental protection, like through bioremediation. My journey with SynbioAfrica actually started way back in 2018. By that time, I was still a graduate student. I was doing my master's in molecular biology and biotechnology at Macquarie University. I got to learn about a biosecurity fellowship program that was being sponsored by Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. It was supported also through BioBricks Foundation. So I got to learn about synthetic biology. It was my first time actually to read from the advert. So I got interested to read and learn more about it and also apply for the fellowship program. So when I did my reading for about one week, I got to get to know that it is more of advanced biotechnology and I was already a student doing biotechnology. So that's when I got interested. I made my application and it was successful. So I attended my first synthetic biology conference actually in 2017. That was in Singapore. And that's when I met all the thought leaders in the ecosystem of synthetic biology because it was a global meeting of synthetic biology stakeholders and experts across the globe. The people that I met were the representatives from iGEM and I think that was the best starting point. I met a team from iGEM headquarters and had a brief discussion with them. And so they interested me a lot because I realized that iGEM participation is the cornerstone or the foundation of interesting the young generation into the field of synthetic biology. So getting back to my country, that was the first step that I took creating the first iGEM team in East Africa at McKellar University where I was studying. And it was successful because in 2018 we were able to send our team to Boston for iGEM foundation. I mean iGEM competition. After that, it's when many interested scientists, students across the country started reaching out to me, their interest also to be part of this synthetic biology association. So we first started seen by Uganda, but along the road many other interested scientists outside Uganda came in. So we decided to have it as seen by Africa to be more inclusive. So the whole idea was to bring together all like-minded scientists who are interested in this new field for potential application to solve some of the problems that we have in Africa. So that's how it started. And yes, along the road COVID-19 came in and we were not able to do much in 2019, but came back in 2021 to officially launch seen by Africa through our first international synthetic biology and biosecurity conference in Africa that took place in Kampala, Uganda. So that was the launch of seen by Africa, where we brought on board stakeholders from Africa CDC in person and also our minister of science and technology for Uganda was there to officially launch seen by Africa. So having all this in place, our key focus is in the areas of research and development in the field of synthetic biology and also championing about safety, biosecurity and the current COVID-19 pandemic has made us realize that one health approach is very key. So at our center of excellence, we proposed to have a separate section where we are going to be addressing some of those one health concepts. So that is briefly about how seen by Africa came in and our future prospect. But to my side, my current research interest lies around utilizing the available biomass that we have in Africa so that we can use genetic engineering to turn it into valuable products like biofuel and also we have a lot of genetic resources in our biodiversity in Africa. So we are also going to utilize that and use genetic technology to identify some of the novel genetic resources that are in the environment there that could be a potential application for therapy, getting new therapeutic agents from the biodiversity and also my current actually the active research interest that I'm working on is trying to engineer the microbiome for therapeutic purposes. So basically that is my journey and where I am currently we are seen by Africa, a lot more are still on the pipeline that we are following up. Really wonderful overview. I mean we've got a lot going on, really cool to hear about, excited to eventually see more about what comes out of utilizing sort of unique biomass sources in Africa and maybe some of those unique microbes that you talk about as well. So I'm wondering building from that, can you maybe give us an overview of the current state of synthetic biology in Africa and maybe try and highlight some notable advancements or projects going on in Africa that you're excited about? Yes, synthetic biology landscape in Africa is growing steadily but slowly. As I said, iGEM is the foundation of synthetic biology and so we are seeing a slow uptake of synthetic biology participation. We have seen teams from Africa joining at the iGEM participation competition but it's still low because we have less than 1% of our teams represented in the competition. In terms of research, we have countries that are working on malaria research, especially they are using the gene drive technology which is part of the synthetic biology technologies to address some of the challenges we have and this one is geared towards controlling mosquitoes because we have a lot of burden of malaria in Africa. So there's a lot of research being done on gene drive, much is still contentious because of the safety issues but a lot of research are already being done in Kenya is being done actually in Uganda also is being done and in terms of agricultural innovation we have a lot of research for example in our National Agricultural Research Organisation here there are many research being done on different crops especially bananas to try to improve the crop yield and also enhance their disease resistance plus also enhancing some of the nutritional values like vitamin A on some of these products and also in terms of diagnostics and therapeutics we have some of the research centres that are championing that trying to come up with diagnostics especially for TB and HIV and different research organisations like for instance we have Uganda Virus Research Institute in Uganda here there is a section that is championing vaccine discovery especially for HIV so these are some of the key innovative ideas and the research that are being done in the areas of synthetic biology and others are tackling environmental solutions through biolimitation to in order to clean up the pollution that we have in our environment and along the way we have many capacity building initiatives like we have been holding conferences workshops and this is geared towards powering our students researchers and also the policy makers and regulators to understand the synthetic biology the potential benefits and the risk associated with it and how we can handle such risk yeah we have a regulatory framework and policy being put in place Africa CDC is championing that they're trying to put up a template a regulatory framework that countries can adopt and customize it to to suit their country needs so Africa CDC is working on this by safety and by security initiative but of course all these are being done through the interested parties and stakeholders but there are a lot of limitations in terms of funding infrastructure regulatory framework adoption is low in most countries and also you know our research priorities in Africa sometimes may not focus much into and the areas of synthetic biology so it needs to be taken care of and basically the biggest challenge we have is the negative public perception because of lack of knowledge and awareness about this technology of synthetic biology so briefly that is the landscape and the challenges or the limitations that we have along with synthetic biology in Africa yeah really cool I was thinking to kind of dive into a couple of the things that you overviewed so nicely Jaffrey the one that we wanted to dive into first was the sort of funding landscape across Africa and within the specific countries I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how this works at the level of say the African Union versus the different countries what sort of funding mechanisms there are both for research and with respect to this in bio Africa initiative do you get funding from both levels of both the countries and the African Union or is it mostly at the level of the individual countries when we talk of funding landscape that is actually a challenge a big challenge in Africa and especially synthetic biology which is still not so well accepted in the African context this really very low support for synthetic biology and I can say that if I talk of seen by Africa actually I think we we have not got any funding support from the government because in bio Africa is based in in Uganda but up to now we have not yet managed to convince the government to have a synthetic biology put into the national budget and so we are still basically funding our programs and initiatives all the projects through small grants that we apply and successful we are given the grant to run that particular project so the funding landscape is really still wanting and the government level we have some of the funding windows that the government usually have especially in Uganda but it's really limited to a very few a very few projects and also it is very specific to some of the areas that the government sees as a priority so it makes it really very very hard for us to tap into such opportunities and at the Africa union level yeah there are some grants that usually comes up but still the competitive value of that funding makes it very hard and especially it comes when it already has priority areas that the government is focusing on and the worst thing that makes it really very challenging is that some of this funding our channel to government research institutions or academic institutions so as seen by initiative is like a private initiative it's really very hard to also tap into that unless you collaborate with some of those government entities that's when you can be able to also get some of the resources so in terms of funding i can say it's still very low we need to do a lot to convince different government entities so that they can have it you know as one of the priorities in their national budget yeah well i hope that some of your efforts through Zimbabwe Africa will hopefully be able to turn that around and and can improve the the state of funding there i'm also hoping you can delve into one of the other challenges you'd mentioned already because it's something i think that synthetic biology has to deal with a lot which is the challenge of public perception and it's definitely a huge challenge in the us as well it's one of the most polarized scientific issues in the public eye so can you delve a little bit deeper into the public perception of synthetic biology in africa yes i mentioned that you know public perception towards in bio is really very negative in the africa region because first of all we realized that we we still don't have regulatory framework to oversee some of these synthetic value technologies so there are fears among the community that these technologies that we are trying to focus on might be a risk factor to the community since we don't have a proper control measures to oversee these technologies but key to that is lack of knowledge and awareness about this synthetic biology even the scientists themselves most of them may not be knowing more about what synthetic biology entails some of the potential benefits and the risk factors that comes with it so that knowledge gap is very key and so it hinders at the uptake of this new technology in the african continent we have also realized that there are a lot of ethical and safety concerns around in bio and you know some of the research have have already been done in the past and so it raised a lot of queries in terms of the ethical and safety issues so that scares the public into accepting these more advanced synthetic value technologies and in africa we are we have the traditional practices and values people are still glued towards traditional agriculture and natural resources management practices so seeing synthetic biology advanced this might be a threat to some of these traditional practices that we already have established in some of the african cultures so that makes it very hard for the community also to accept and some of this initiative we need to engage the community and have a proper communication strategy so this is a key challenge also because it is still low so we need to have a more transparent and culturally sensitive approach to the community and we need to give them what the potential benefits of this as synthetic biology is for them and also you know i like how the concerns can be addressed and also here from their side how they feel this can be addressed to meet their demands and needs in solving some of the challenges that we have done in the community so those are some of the key factors that makes the public perception really very low in the african continent and if all these can be addressed i think over time the public perception will grow towards hostility yeah yeah i hope so i hope i hope we can implement some of those same things really around the world to bring greater acceptance of synthetic biology to solve some of these problems we've been discussing so dropher you just mentioned sort of biosafety and biosecurity and and sinbioafrica has some strong efforts in that area can you tell us a little bit about what sinbioafrica is doing to try and make sure that the synthetic biology research in africa is conducted responsibly uh one of the key thing is that the positive side is that most of the african countries are parties to some of these international agreements and policies and the main one is the katakena protocol on biosafety and i think more than 80 percent of the african countries are already parties to this this is a great move towards enhancing biosafety and biosecurity of our research work oversight onto the work that our scientists do and also most countries are parties to the biological weapons convention which guards against the use of these biological and chemical weapons which could be dangerous to the population outside there so that is a good move that countries are taking towards having a more responsible research and also at the institutional level we already have some of institutional review committee or boards that oversee and analyze the research that are being done before it is given a go ahead so they do a detailed review of research proposals at the institutional level before moving it forward to a higher level like the national body that oversees all the research in the country like for uganda we have ugandan national council for science and technology that grants the final approval so such are already in place in most countries to enhance research and also a responsible research in the african continent and a lot of capacity building initiative has been in place for examples in by africa has been holding workshops on biosafety and biosecurity and also in conferences our conferences usually have bigger section for about safety and biosecurity where we bring most stakeholders in biosafety and biosecurity to empower our scientists so that they can do a responsible research we also bring on board regulators and policymakers because they need to understand the risk associated with synthetic biology technologies and how it can be managed and regulation in the terms of regulation africa cdc is doing a great job they already come up with a draft template about safety and biosecurity framework that member states africa union member states can adopt and you know customize it to their local needs in a particular country so those are some of the advancement in trying to help and see that our scientists have a responsible seen by our research in the african continent yeah very cool thank you for filling us in there so the next thing we were interested in was to learn a little bit more about what you see as the biggest opportunities for investing in africa's growing symbio ecosystem and if you could talk a little bit about where in africa different biotechnology hubs are developing that is a good question you know in terms of investing in africa's you know first of all we have a lot of opportunities for investment in the field of synthetic biology the first area is the area of agriculture and food security as i said before there are a lot of sites that are already being done so investing in startups that are doing research in the area of enhancing the crop yield in in africa and also enhancing the nutritional values of some of the staple crops that we have in africa would really be a good a good investment and also enhancing their resistance to pests and diseases that would be another key area that can be of interest for investment in terms of health care and and medicine we have seen many startups that are trying to come up with new diagnostics for hiv for tb and also recently other startups are coming up with a diagnostic for rapid detection of saskov 2 so there are also other companies that are working on new therapies especially in uganda here we have a joint clinical research center that is trying to champion gene therapy in the country so supporting some of those initiatives are really key and there are many other organizations scattered across africa that are trying to come up with new vaccines especially currently many companies are trying to come up with covid 19 vaccine so supporting some of those initiatives is very key and in terms of renewable energy we have abundant biomass in africa especially agricultural waste so we can use that opportunity to invest in companies that are putting up a bio plan to change some of these biomass into useful products like biofuel and also there are areas of industrial biotechnology where some of the organizations are using microbes for bioproduction of some of the useful chemicals and also you know supporting the establishment of research centers like sin by africa and you know supporting infrastructure to support some of the innovative sites that we have in africa would be a good investment for the growth of synthetic biology in africa very cool there's a lot of fun stuff going on there i'm curious sort of relatedly that is a huge lift and a ton of people elsewhere are working on so i'm curious what your thoughts are on the role of international collaboration in the development of synthetic biology in africa and how should other folks in other countries engage with your efforts in those areas you just mentioned yeah international collaboration is really very key because as you can notice we still have low expertise very few expertise in the field of synthetic biology and so through international collaboration we shall be able to you know enhance knowledge sharing through exchange programs where we can you know send our scientists from africa outside there to get hands-on practical experience to some of these technologies that we have in synthetic biology it will also help in access to some of these high-tech tools for sin bio research because that is one of the challenges we have we don't have access to some of those tools that are required to run this advanced research in synthetic biology through international collaboration we shall also be building the capacity of our scientists through collaboration and trainings having trainings tailored towards particular technologies that are being used or applied in the field of synthetic biology and having regular workshops to you know share best practices and any new advancement in the field of synthetic biology those are some of the areas that national collaboration can support yeah so international collaboration is really good but consider the factor of understanding and respecting the local interest because different countries in africa has different priorities so that should be factored in so that it is seen as being something of benefits not rather being exploitative to a particular country so that should be taken note as international collaboration flows yeah that's super important and it's related to some discussion that we've been having here in north america too is how do we grow this community in a sort of equitable way in an inclusive way and we were curious if there were sort of similar discussions going on in the development of the community that you're working on is the question how we can have a more equitable and inclusive symbiotic environment in africa yeah i think the most important thing is to engage the public because you cannot start a initiative from nowhere we need to bring the public together from the start so that they get to understand what exactly synthetic biology is what benefits does it have for them to solve some of their pressing needs so bringing together the public and you know having an open and transparent communication with them about symbio and you know bringing out some of the issues potential issues that symbio can really bring break out and also discussing with them the best solution to address some of those risks that may come as a result of symbio research so community involvement is very key and yes so we need to also have the approach of solving local problems using the local solution that would be more adaptable to the community or at the country level so that would really be focused on especially food security which is an issue in africa and also health care so having that local problem solving approach is very key and we should share that openly and some of these technologies that we are talking about should be open source to promote and accelerate research progress and collaboration in africa and the key thing is having a gender equality and diversity consideration we should encourage the participation of especially women and some of the underrepresented groups some of these synthetic biology research initiative so that they feel the ownership and also the inclusivity now having all groups represented is very key in doing this we need to have local research hubs like house in by africa is trying to to have in place a center of excellence in synthetic biology research so that it is owned by african scientists to make it more tailored to to solve the problem in the local context so in doing this we should also rely on international collaboration and partnership to facilitate knowledge and also technology transfer through having those joined research projects that can build the capacity of the local scientists yeah that's all really great a lot in there and a lot to aspire to and really looking forward to seeing where it goes i want to ask a little on a different about your recent senbio africa 2.0 conference it happened just a couple of weeks ago so could you tell us a little bit about the conference and how it went maybe try and convince our audience to come to senbio 3.0 whenever you get around to having that yeah recently we had a very successful second international synthetic biology and biosecurity conference in africa that took place in campala uganda we were very privileged to have some of the thought leaders in the field of synthetic biology join us at the conference and uh yes so this is one of the key initiative that we have that we are trying to work on towards building the capacity of our scientists and also bringing together policymakers regulators and also the public and academic actually we brought on board different interested parties ranging from students policymakers regulators people who are engaged in research at the research institutions so that they can come and hear from experts who are already been in the field of synthetic biology they get interested and also foster collaboration that can be of help to them to learn and also get the knowledge transfer so this year the conference was having about five themes most notable was the biosecurity and biosafety that we tackled through our international experts in the field of biosafety and biosecurity and empowering our scientists to conduct responsible research and also we showcased some of the technologies you know advanced research that are being done in the field of agriculture we have already a lot of work being done at our national research organization here especially bananas trying to enhance its disease resistance and also adding on some nutritional values like vitamin a and increasing the crop yield of some of the available crop that we use here ester core crops so we showcase a lot of innovation across africa most notably we also brought on board students you know to meet and interact and learn more from the experts in the field of synthetic biology that was another area of trying to promote our young scientists and interest them in the field of synthetic biology at a younger stage so these are our future leaders in the field of synthetic biology so we need to invest in them we need to bring them on board at an earlier stage so that they get to understand the basics and the potential benefits and the risk associated with this synthetic biology so moving forward this is a recurrent initiative that we are going to be running every year so we encourage more stakeholders more experts to come inspire our scientists in africa every year we shall be holding this conference so it's a message out there that come and support africa through this initiative to build the capacity of our scientists for the proper uptake of this technology in the african continent yeah it sounds like an exciting conference and a lot of fun imagine syd bioafrica 10.0 conference happening in the future 10 years from now what do you want the state of synthetic biology in africa to look like how do you hope that things will progress yeah i think a lot of interest is growing at the moment so the future of synthetic biology is generally bright in africa so one of the key areas that i look in 10 years will be ahead is the area of research and education i see that in the next five to 10 years there will be more research centers established also most of the academic institutions will have some of these academic programs on synthetic biology initiated in their universities also we are going to see a lot of collaboration between these different universities to share ideas on how synthetic biology can be grounded in africa most of the research institutions industry players you know will come on board to support this new development of synthetic biology in africa and we are going to see many local innovations like startups in different areas to address some of the challenges that we have in africa we have a major challenge in health agriculture and also environmental management is a big challenge in africa so we see that many universities will come on board to tackle some of these and we very well know that synthetic biology is a key factor in the bioeconomy development of a country and this we anticipate the creation of many bio-based industries that will be aiming at producing some of these valuable products ranging from pharmaceuticals to biofuels and this will first the development of the economy of the bio economy of the country and also it will create more jobs for our youth so it will be also part of the job creation to support our you know scientists outside there so a lot of initiatives are also being put in place to have regulatory framework in place this is something that is going to be highly needed in the next five to ten years so that the research that are being done in the field of synthetic biology is well regulated monitored and doesn't pose risk to the community and also to the research community in the respective research centers so we have already seen a lot of capacity building efforts being taken up as we have seen seen by africa is already having many platforms workshops conferences in order to bring on both our scientists policymakers and regulators to get to understand the whole concept of synthetic biology so we see that this one will be an increasing trend in africa in terms of building capacity so synthetic biology is a key area of entrepreneurship and startups actually we have seen many other international startups grow big so we also anticipate that in the next five to ten years we shall have many biotech startups that have grown to a much bigger level this will attract investment of course because some of these innovative ideas will attract investors and in turns it will also support the development of our local ecosystem for biotechnology in africa and of course the key thing is going to be the public outside there and the public engagement will be increased because of the outreach and education efforts that are being done by different research institutions and especially like seen by africa already have these in their organizational goals to embark on educational outreach outside there to teach the public also the scientists about this new concept of synthetic biology well it sounds like a lot of work but a lot of really exciting work ahead and a lot building on what you've already done and i think sort of one of the last questions i want to ask you here is we're wrapping up is it seems like you've done a ton and i can imagine you've learned a ton from your experience over the past couple of years starting sinbioafrica so i'm curious maybe if you have any advice that you'd give yourself if you could go back to the time when you were starting sinbioafrica what advice would you give yourself that is actually very important the key thing here is persistence building an organization takes time and you need to put a lot of efforts because there is a chance that you are going to face a lot of challenges along the way so being persistent and determined will be the key for you to overcome some of these obstacles and for you to achieve the goals that you want to achieve those are the key things that has helped me being focused on what you want and not giving up because setting up an organization like sinbioafrica is not for the faint-hearted because if you're not patient enough you will give up when you're about to reach where you're supposed to be but there are considerations that you have to put in place this is what i actually did we i had to bring on board a team of dedicated people actually they advise fields so that we we don't only bring on board scientists but also we bring on board other people who have the entrepreneurship interest and skills so that on the table we have different ideas brought on board for discussion so having a diverse team is very key in starting up an institute like this first of all i had to you know you need to first assess the landscape of sinbio in this case i was interested in synthetic biology and i realized the landscape of synthetic biology in africa way back in 2017 was extremely low so i said my goal is to increase the knowledge and the uptake of synthetic biology in africa so that was already an opportunity for me to venture into after doing the scanning of the landscape of synthetic biology in africa and also i had to you know understand you know the regulatory landscape because you cannot bring these technologies where it is not supported so i had to make some overview of the african regulatory framework availability and it was really low so that was another area that needed you know support and to have our policy makers and regulators on board to support this and the key thing is having the funding and sustainability plan in place so this is something that is crucial and is unpredictable you may plan but still things may go the other way around as you move at the moment like for our case we were depending on grants but also it's key to have the other option of reaching out to investors who are able to put some investment in your innovative ideas that you are trying to come up with and having that sustainable business model that can make sure the organization long-term growth is supported is very key and in this case we are targeting our young scientists outside there so having in plan to reach out to these key people like the scientists and the students outside there through outreach program is very key because to promote awareness and understanding of this synthetic biology among those key stakeholders and what helped a lot is having the network because for my case i created the network in my first conference that i attended in singapore that network has helped me even up to now so having that collaboration partnership and network with thought leaders key institutions and research organization plus actually industry players have supported a lot the initiative that's in by africa so it's very very key to have them on board and of course bringing on on board also government agencies like the ministry of science technology it brings towards you know i shared resources and knowledge exchange you know and also having a more impactful collective efforts towards the growth of an organization or an institution like seen by africa that we are in the process of establishing yeah and also in you need to prepare to adapt because situations can change there are some policies that may come that are not favorable for like seen by or in africa so you should prepare for some of those circumstances and you know see how you can adapt to it and often over time you need to measure whether you are achieving the goals that you had set before and this is something that me and my team we do to see if we are on the right direction and if we are not on the right direction we need to have another strategy adjusted accordingly to meet the goals of the organization basically also having you know good communication strategy to share the progress of your projects or some of the work that you are doing in your organization and also the impact that you have already created so that people get to know that really you are doing the work for the public outside there for the benefits of the country for the benefits of the continent because you may be doing really great stuff there but if you are not communicating it outside there it will not be known nobody will know about what you are doing so no no one will be willing to support you so putting all this into the public domain is very important you can use social media to communicate some of the progress that you're making and also having conferences like what we do the workshops and also publications those are some of the key approaches that you can use to publicize the work you're doing make people more interested and willing to support your initiative so if i were to go back those are things that i would even put more effort on it but i managed to have all this concept throughout the journey for sinbaya africa and that's why we were able to reach where we are uh lastly i'm happy to to say that sinbaya africa was nominated and it won the bartech company of the year from the africa prestige award also uh me as the founder and co i was awarded recently was the sinbaya beta impact award during the sinbaya beta conference in oakland this year 2023 so those are some of the recognition of the efforts that we have put for the last five years and uh yeah it's a motivation for us to put more efforts and see that africa is put on map in terms of advancement and uptake of synthetic biology in africa congrats on those awards very very excited and yeah i can say personally i'm i'm also amazed at the amount of work you all have put in and excited to see what comes of it as you keep pushing so thank you yeah thanks a lot it's just a an awesome amount of progress that you guys are making and we're really excited to see where this goes before we finish up here are there any things that you would like to promote while you're on the podcast yeah so the key thing that uh i want to put forward outside there is the support for of our conferences we call upon many stakeholders to come on board thought leaders to come on board to support this initiative because this is one of the biggest initiative that we have and the biggest platform that we have for bringing our scientists policymakers regulators the public academician and all those stakeholders together so that they can listen and get inspired and you know share our best practices in the field of synthetic biology so it's a big platform that we need support on that and also we are in the process of establishing a center of excellence in synthetic biology research and education in africa also having the aspect of biosafety and biosecurity and in doing that we need you know support in terms of infrastructure support in terms of equipment so any support from out there that can help in in our dream of having a center of excellence that is not a small task we need a lot of support in that area yeah through we are open for grants investment and donation of equipments actually is is welcome actually that is one of the strategy that we are we are going to use you know so that we get support for our infrastructural and equipment for the center of excellence in synthetic research in africa and we call upon scientists who are interested in supporting our innovative young scientists in africa through knowledge sharing and technology transfer to come on board and support them and also link them to investors who can be able to support their great initiative that could be a potential solution to some of the challenges we have in africa that would really be a big impact as we grow synthetic biology in africa all right cool well hopefully we can get some some support for you there so again thank you so much joffrey for coming on the podcast it's been a pleasure talking to you thank you thank you for the opportunity and for the time and hope for the best this has been another episode of ebrc and translation a production of the engineering biology research consortiums student and postdoc association for more information about ebrc visit our website at ebrc.org if you're a student or postdoc and are interested in getting involved with the ebrc student and postdoc association you can find our membership application linked in the episode description a big thank you to the entire ebrc sba podcast team andrew hunt ross jones david my heidi clumpa and reina sayeed thanks to ebrc for their support and of course to you our listeners for tuning in we look forward to sharing our next episode with you soon