DKFZ & Alumni Reception: West Africa 2026

Panel Discussion

Cancer Research in West Africa: A Changing Landscape

For decades, infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and HPV-related diseases dominated both healthcare priorities and research investment across Africa. As a result, much of the continent's scientific infrastructure, international partnerships, and research capacity were built around infectious disease prevention, surveillance, and treatment.

Today, however, we are witnessing growing attention to breast cancer, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, and other non-communicable diseases across West Africa. This raises an important question: Is this shift primarily driven by a true increase in cancer incidence resulting from demographic changes, urbanization, dietary and lifestyle transitions, and longer life expectancy? Or are we becoming better at diagnosing, documenting, and understanding cancers that may have always existed but were previously under-recognized?

Against this backdrop, our discussion today will explore the current state of cancer research in West Africa, key scientific opportunities, major barriers and limitations, pathways for equitable collaborations between African and European institutions, and a shared vision for the future of cancer research, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in the region.

	Clifford Nwaeburu DKFZ Alum Moderator	Senior Drug Safety Manager at Miltenyi Biomedicine in Munich DKFZ PhD Student 2014 - 2016 DKFZ Major in Cancer Biology 2011 – 2013
	Mohammed Abba DKFZ Alum Panelist	Dr. Abba is a physician-scientist with extensive work in translational oncology, particularly molecular mechanisms of cancer progression, metastasis, microRNAs, colorectal cancer, and precision oncology. His publications focus on how molecular pathways regulate tumor development and metastasis
	Ezekiel Femi Adebiyi DKFZ Researcher Panelist	Prof. Adebiyi is one of Africa's leading bioinformaticians. His work spans computational biology, malaria, genomics, ML, AI, population genetics, human genetic diseases like microsatellite instability cancer and children epilepsy and health data science. He has also helped build major African bioinformatics networks and capacity-building
	Ofure Obazee  DKFZ Alum Panelist	Dr. Obazee trained in genomic epidemiology and cancer susceptibility research, contributing significantly to pancreatic cancer genetics, before moving into digital transformation and AI enablement within industry. Her work bridges epidemiology, genomics, data analytics, and implementation science. DKFZ Postdoctoral Researcher2014 - 2018
	Bismarck Dinko  Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Ghana Panelist	Dr. Dinko studied biology (2006) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana and did his PhD (2013) on Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte immunity at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in London, UK. After 9.5 years of experience as a group leader and faculty at the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) in Ho, Ghana, he is now Senior Lecturer and Group Leader at KNUST in Kumasi, Ghana since January 2023 and is interested in the biology and immunology of malaria parasite stages responsible for person-to-person transmission via mosquitoes (gametocytes). He is currently a visiting Professor at the Centre for Integrative Infectious Diseases, Parasitology at the Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany.