On the 12th/13th November the WACCBIP DELTAS programme inception meeting took place in the Biochemistry, Cell & Molecular Biology department at the University of Ghana, Accra. This five year programme led by Dr Gordon A. Awandare is funded by the Wellcome Trust to provide PhD and post-doctoral opportunities to African scientists in Africa in partnership with several international institutions. The programme is currently accepting applications for post-doctoral fellowships (closing date 30th November 2015) and the call for applications to the PhD stream will be released soon.

The DELTAS programme is based at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) set up by Gordon with support from the World Bank. However, it is a pan-African programme with projects available at several other African institutions – PhD students and post-doctoral scientists will be able to work with groups at WACCBIP, MRTC (Mali), MRC ( The Gambia), KEMRI (Kenya) and the University of Cape Town (South Africa). Faculty members of the programme’s international partners (LSHTM and the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Pittsburgh and Cape Town) will provide co-supervision, mentoring, and six month secondments in their laboratories.

The fundamental aim of the programme is to expand disease research capacity in Africa, supporting African scientists to carry out high quality research on the diseases (both communicable and non-communicable) that assail the continent.