INFECTIOUS disease outbreaks in African countries are, unfortunately, all too common. Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Uganda; Marburg virus in Guinea or Equatorial Guinea; cholera in Malawi; malaria and tuberculosis are among them. These diseases do not respect human-made or porous borders. So it’s essential that scientists in Africa are able to generate and share critical data on the pathogens in time to inform public-health decisions. Authors ALAN CHRISTOFFELS, Director South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape SOFONIAS KIFLE TESSEMA, Program Lead for Pathogen Genomics at the Africa CDC Genomic sequencing technologies are…