African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

The African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB)^[1] is a non-profit professional association dedicated to the advancement of bioinformatics and computational biology in Africa.

Key Information

Abbreviation	ASBCB
Formation	2004
Founded at	Cape Town, South Africa
Type	Non-profit organisation
Purpose	Professional association for bioinformatics and computational biology in Africa
Region served	Africa
Services	Professional membership Networking Research projects Conferences
Fields	Bioinformatics Computational Biology
Affiliations	International Society for Computational Biology
Website	https://www.asbcb.org/
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ASBCB was established in February 2004 at a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.^[2]

The Society serves as an international forum and resource devoted to developing competence and expertise in bioinformatics and computational biology in Africa. It complements its activities with those of other international and national societies, associations and institutions, public and private, that have similar aims. It also promotes the standing of African bioinformatics and computational biology in the global arena through liaison and cooperation with other international bodies^[3][4].

It is an affiliated regional group of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB).^[5]

The ASBCB supports the development of bioiniformatics and computational biology at a national level across Africa, including in Ghana^[6], Nigeria^[7], South Africa^[8] and Zimbabwe^[9].

Many of the most important applications of bioininformatics and computational biology in Africa relate to human genetic diversity, which does not match national boundaries. The ASBCB supports international projects with this focus, such as the H3ABioNet network^[10]. Although the H3BioNet project^[10][11] has finished it was successful in supporting the improvement of bioinformatics in Africa^[6] and continues to supply services to the African bioinformatics and computational biology community, including DSI-Africa (Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa)^[12] which focuses on the data science techniques needed to manage the huge amount of data generated by current bioinformatics. H3ABioNet has also supported Introduction to Bionformatics Training^[13](IBT) courses delivered remotely across Africa.

In collaboration with the US National Center for Biotechnology Information and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) the ASBCB has organised online activities to improve the skills of African scientists using the computational tools essential for bioinformatics^[14] These activities are part of those needed to increase proficiency in bioinformatics among African students^[15]. In conjunction with other panAfrican initiatives such as the African BioGenome Project^[16] the ASBCB supports initiatives needed to increase bioinformatics resources in Africa.

Since 2007 it has been hosting the ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference on Bioinformatics^[17] at different locations in Africa to bring together scientists working in bioinformatics from different African nations together with other international researchers in the field.

Bioinformatics is an extremely diverse and active field. See Bioinformatics below to read about its many directions.

Because the application of bionformatics in Africa is very much related to regional human genetic diversity on that continent see also Human genetics below to learn more.