The Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) hosted an advanced bioinformatics training course from March 4 to 14, 2026, at the AHRI Bioinformatics Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The course was organized and delivered by trainers from the Armauer Hansen Research Institute, the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), Belgium, and the University of Antwerp, Belgium, with funding provided through the FA5 project.
Participants were selected through a competitive process involving proposal submissions and interviews. Trainees came from different African countries, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and South Africa. The program was designed to strengthen the skills of researchers who already had foundational bioinformatics knowledge and help them advance to a higher level of expertise.
The training included a refresher on essential preliminary bioinformatics analyses such as quality control and trimming of sequencing data, sequence alignment, variant calling, and annotation. Participants also took part in hands-on exercises in genomics and phylogenomics, including reconstructing pathogen transmission across borders using genomic data. Additional sessions focused on antimicrobial resistance analysis in bacterial genomics, as well as advanced topics such as mapping single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) onto 3D protein structures using AlphaFold and automating bioinformatics pipelines for reproducible research.
During the training, participants also had the opportunity to work on their own research projects, applying the skills and tools learned throughout the course to real datasets. From Ethiopia, participants represented several institutions, including the Armauer Hansen Research Institute, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), University of Gondar, and Jimma University.
The newly equipped bioinformatics center and computational infrastructure at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute played a key role in supporting the successful delivery of the course. Such training initiatives contribute to building a sustainable bioinformatics community in Ethiopia and across other African countries, while advancing AHRI’s broader goal of becoming a leading bioinformatics hub on the African continent.