With vision and force of personality, Christian Happi built a world-class genomics center so Africans can help Africa

Ee, Nigeria—From the dirt road that fronts Redeemer’s University, all you can see are modest, low-slung buildings and a sports field with a threadbare carpet of grass. Redeemer’s is a private, little-known school owned by a Pentecostal megachurch in this hardscrabble farming town. But beyond that sparse field is a cluster of state-of-the-art labs, classrooms, and sleek dormitories with distinctive rammed-earth walls—the new campus of the 10-year-old African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID).

Leading a tour in late April, Director Christian Happi, the molecular biologist who founded ACEGID, promises not to brag. “I’m not a puffy person,” he says. He breaks his pledge within minutes. Stepping outside a lab where graduate and postdoctoral students from five African nations are at work, he says, “If these kids keep working hard, it’s possible that in next 20, 25 years, a Nobel Prize will come out of here.”

Established to address emerging infectious diseases in Nigeria and its neighbors, the institute has trained more than 1600 scientists from around the continent in genomics. Its original focus on Lassa fever and Ebola has expanded to include a host of other urgent diseases, including COVID-19 and mpox, as well as the hunt for novel pathogens in animals and humans. ACEGID’s scientists have engineered disease diagnostics, tracked genetic changes in viruses in real time, and published a steady stream of papers in top-tier journals. And the center has become a shining example of how a research institution run by Africans in a once-colonized country can serve the continent’s needs...

... When it comes to battling infectious diseases, Africans want to track the pathogens harming them, help develop drugs and vaccines they need, and train young scientists on sophisticated equipment. All of this is happening now at ACEGID. “I see the center as a pathway for the continent to evolve,” says virologist John Nkengasong, a native of Cameroon who heads the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and previously ran the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention...

... When he was 8 years old and attending a Catholic, French-speaking elementary school, Happi developed a high fever, gasped for air, and couldn’t eat or stand. His mother hoisted him onto her back and lugged him on foot to the hospital. On the way home, she took a break under a tree. Happi asked why he was so sick. The doctors said he had malaria, she said.

“I told her that when I grow, if this disease is still on, I will find a cure for it,” Happi says.

“That is not possible,” she said, “but I wish you well...”

... In 1993, Happi moved to Nigeria for graduate work at the University of Ibadan, one of the continent’s top-ranked schools, originally an offshoot of the University of London. “It was a huge transition to go to a British, Anglo-Saxon program,” says Happi, whose English skills were rudimentary on arrival. “The thinking process was different.”


Christian (left) and Anise Happi met as graduate students at the University of Ibadan.Andrew Esiebo
In graduate school, Happi sequenced the genomes of malaria-causing parasites and met his wife, Anise, a veterinary student also from Cameroon who now works at ACEGID...

... On a bus from the London airport to Oxford, he had a pivotal encounter. Dyann Wirth, a renowned Harvard immunologist, was also aboard and they began talking. Over lunch at the meeting, she invited Happi to visit her lab, and he soon decided to continue his work there, receiving his Ph.D. in 2000 and then staying on as a postdoc. “She took me under her wings,” Happi says. His resulting research on malaria drug resistance ultimately led Nigeria to change its policy on which treatments to use...