24 June 2025 – EU-Africa PerMed organised an ICPerMed engagement meeting in Nairobi (Kenya) from 10 to 11 June 2025. The meeting was hosted by the Kenyan National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI). The aim of the meeting was to bring together organisations interested in joining ICPerMed, to discuss personalised medicine in general, the benefits and opportunities coming from global collaborations, and the ICPerMed consortium specifically, and how those joint collaborations can support local, national and regional developments.
Representatives of African Ministries of Health and research funding organisations from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda, together with ICPerMed members from Estonia, Tunisia, France and South Africa, joined the meeting.
During the meeting, a session was specifically focused on members of ICPerMed sharing lessons learnt and experiences of participating in this international platform with the participants. Potential new members discussed the main challenges and opportunities of joining ICPerMed, and how doing so could advance the personalised medicine agenda in their country.
With the support of the EU-Africa PerMed project, the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology COSTECH has very recently joined ICPerMed, becoming the fourth Africa organisation becoming a full member of the Consortium.
EU-Africa PerMed is an international project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 framework programme. The project has the objective of integrating African countries in the development of a global Personalised Medicine research agenda by facilitating their participation in the ICPerMed activities and by strengthening the collaborations in personalised medicine between Africa and Europe. Incorporating African Countries to the global personalised medicine agenda can contribute to shortening existing health disparities between developed and developing countries, as well as facilitating access of African countries to new tools and technologies that have the potential to make healthcare more efficient and equitable.
More information, e.g. the agenda and slides are available here.