The opportunity in African genome resource for precision medicine

There is a critical need to increase and diversify genomic study in the global efforts to achieving full implementation of precision medicine. Given this central importance of Africa to human origins, genetic diversity, and disease susceptibility, there is a clear scientific and public health need to develop large-scale efforts that examines disease susceptibility across diverse populations within Africa [1]. The marked genomic diversity and allelic differentiation among populations in Africa, in combination with the substantially lower linkage disequilibrium (correlation) among genetic variants, will provide excellent opportunities to gain new insights into disease etiology and genetic fine mapping that have relevance for African populations and globally [2,3].