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. 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. Importantly, given varying environments and adaptation, the spectrum and distribution of risk factors for a broad range of non-infectious and infectious diseases, and their individual contribution, may differ in African populations compared with European populations or those of African descent in Europe, North America and elsewhere . However, despite the value of conducting such studies in Africa, there have been relatively few investigations of population diversity and the genetic determinants of non-infectious or infectious traits and diseases across the continent.