At the awards ceremony from left, are Professor Tulio de Oliveira, from Stellenbosch University, German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Dr Sikhulile Moyo, laboratory director at the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP). PICTURE: HEIDI SCHERM/DAS (GERMAN AFRICA FOUNDATION)
The prestigious German Africa Award was recently awarded to renowned bioinformatician Professor Tulio de Oliveira at Stellenbosch University (SU) and Dr Sikhulile Moyo, laboratory director at the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP).
As per a press statement issued by SU, the Award was presented by German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Allianz Forum in Berlin on Friday November 25.
Professor De Oliveira is a professor of Bioinformatics holding a joint appointment at SU’s School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr Moyo, in turn, is an SU alumnus who obtained his PhD in Medical Virology at the University in 2016.
The German Africa Award to Professor De Oliveira and Dr Moyo comes just months after the scientists were selected for this year’s TIME 100 Most Influential People list.
They are being recognised for their work in the field of genomics and epidemiology. In November 2021, they led the multidisciplinary team who discovered the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, which quickly became the dominant variant of the virus globally.
Says Professor De Oliveira: “The German Africa Award highlights the fact that world-class work, such as research on infectious diseases, can be done in Africa. This breaks the perception that when you think of Africa, you only think of poverty and the lack of technology, etc.
“During the pandemic, South Africa was a global leader in scientific research. With the right investment you can create centres of excellence that can have a massive influence in the whole world and in fact protect the whole world. High-level science and high-level technology can be done in South Africa and can have a big effect on not only health, but also on business.
“Sometimes we have to be assertive as was the case with the detection of Omicron where our research had to be replicated first in Europe to be proven.”
Since 1993, the German Africa Foundation has been honouring outstanding personalities from the African continent who have made a special commitment to democracy, peace, human rights, sustainable development, research, art and culture or social issues in Africa with the German Africa Award. The award winners are selected each year by an independent 20-member jury.
Professor Wim de Villiers, SU Rector and Vice-Chancellor said, this acknowledgment cemented Professor De Oliveira and Dr Moyo as international leaders in their field.
“Their research and subsequent discoveries enabled governments around the world to make scientifically informed decisions about Covid-19 and the Omicron variant, and this award is a justification of their hard work and expertise. Stellenbosch University is immensely proud of their achievement and will continue to enable ground-breaking research with real-world impact.
“Awards like this further enables institutions of higher education in Africa to nurture future generations of scholars and intellectual leaders on the continent.”
In a statement, the German African Foundation said Professor De Oliveira and Dr Moyo are “among the absolute top in their fields of research, not only on the African continent. Nevertheless, this potential is not perceived in Europe and the work of African researchers is not recognised. There must be a clear change in perception here, the award winners demand.
The Federal Chancellor also emphasised this and described the two researchers as an ‘inspiration and incentive to broaden our view, to leave behind old ways of thinking and to establish new partnerships.”
Professor De Oliveira is the founding director of the SU’s new Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI), for which he has already raised more than R300 million in funding. CERI is based in the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking and operates from both the world-class Biomedical Research Institute at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences on SU’s Tygerberg Campus and from offices on the Stellenbosch Campus.
Dr Moyo, in addition to his position at BHP, is also a research associate of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an adjunct senior lecturer at the University of Botswana. He has been serving as a member of Botswana's Covid-19 presidential taskforce and continues to contribute to that country's national response.