Episode Transcript

Claire Murigande

00:05

Hello and welcome back to Narratives of Purpose. You have just tuned into our final episode of the season.

As many of you already know, Narratives of Purpose is all about amplifying social impact by showcasing unique stories of global change makers who are contributing to make a difference in society. And those of you listening for the first time, my name is Claire Murigande. I am your host on this podcast.

If you want to be inspired to take action, then look no further. You are in the right place. Get comfortable and listen to my conversations.

Yaw Bediako

00:37

In Africa we're perhaps asking the wrong question.

We're missing out on three quarters of the pie by exclusively focusing on what government needs to do to support research when the private sector actually should be enabled to carry the larger share of the burden.

Claire Murigande

00:53

My guest in today's episode is Yaw Bediako, the CEO and co founder of Yemaachi Biotech. Yaw is based in Accra, Ghana. His company, Yemaachi, is dedicated to inclusive, innovative science.

They are pioneering clinical genomic research across Africa for multiple cancer types.

Essentially, Yemaachi is creating and harnessing the world's most robust cancer knowledge base to to develop the next generation of drugs that are effective in diverse populations.

Remember to rate and to review our show wherever you listen to your podcasts or simply share your thoughts and feedback on our website using this short link bit.ly/narrativesofpurpose, then select the review page. And now let's jump into the conversation with Yaw. Yaw, welcome to Narrative of Purpose. How are you doing today?

Yaw Bediako

01:50

No, thank you very much. I'm doing quite well, thank you. It's nice to be here.

Claire Murigande

01:54

I'd like you to introduce yourself to the listeners and maybe tell us as well how you got into science and biology, because I think that's the interesting part.

Yaw Bediako

02:03

So, yes, my name is Yaw Bediako. I am co founder and CEO of Yemaachi Biotech. By way of academic background, I have a PhD in immunology, so I'm trained as an immunologist.

I guess it depends how far you want me to go back, but I did high school in Ghana.

I went to College in the US, got my PhD at Northwestern in Chicago, and then subsequently did my first postdoc in Kenya at the Kemri Welcome Trust center in Kilifi, and then relocated to London to the Francis Crick institute for my second postdoc and then in 2019 transitioned back to Ghana to a position at the University of Ghana. So where I remain adjunct faculty.

And then a few months later began, you know, thinking about doing something a little bit different, which led me down this path where in 2020 I founded Yemaachi 2021. We began operations and that is primarily what I spend most of my time doing now over the, you know, it's been about four years now.

Claire Murigande

03:05

It's quite interesting because I was checking your LinkedIn profile before and I see that, you know, coming from Ghana and then going to the us, working as well in Africa again, so going to Kenya and then being in the UK and then coming back to Ghana, you've seen like different contexts, different environments, all within science, research and healthcare, you know, as an extension.

And it's interesting to understand how you really still have a foot in academia, but how did you really make this switch or this jump and say, okay, I've been teaching, I've seen the academic side, but maybe it's more impactful if I go into business. Can you just explain, like what was the thought process or what led you to actually make this move?

Yaw Bediako

03:47

Well, it's not a decision I took lightly and it's not a decision I thought I would make, to be honest, at any point during my training, my focus had always been an academic career in science. My desire, my dream, my vision for myself was to establish myself as an academic researcher in Africa.

Despite the fact that I spent all my time training abroad, I was very interested in coming back home to contribute. And so I did that. You know, I managed, you know, you're right, I spent some time in Kenya. I thought that was my return to the continent.

And then I found myself out again. You know, anybody who is in this field understands you go where you have funding.

But in hindsight, going to the Crick allowed me to mature further, which is something I these days when I talk to up and coming young African scientists, I, I stress that we shouldn't be too eager to come back before we are ready. Operating as a scientist on the African continent is very challenging. And only to be honest, at this point, only the best will survive.

And I think you need to work on yourself to become the best scientist version of yourself in order to have a chance of being competitive and to really build a meaningful career. So four years at the Crick was very useful, but still I was very much focused on academia. That is what I knew.

Most of us who get advanced degrees are sort of programmed to think very, you know, in a very academic mindset. And to be honest, majority of the scientific capacity in Africa is in academic institutions.

So as a scientist, a life scientist with a PhD, your job options are university or university. And so that's what I did.

But when I was on the ground in Africa, I realized that many of the things I thought were true were not necessarily that accurate. And there were certain frustrations and challenges that I encountered that I had not anticipated.

But beyond those, I also became acutely aware of what I view as the biggest weakness in the African academic or the African scientific ecosystem, which is a lack of sustainability.

Because all the funding emanates from outside of the continent, with the exception of, you know, maybe South Africa with a South African MRC and a few countries here and there. But most African countries have next to zero local support for research. In Ghana, nearly all the research is funded from nih.

Japanese government, Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust. You know, it's either external philanthropy or external aid. Basically, that means you only end up doing research that is, quote, unquote, fundable.

And who decides what is fundable is not bodies, organizations on your continent. So that realization and the fact that when I asked questions about this, the response I got was, well, African governments need to do more.

And to be frank, as an African, that did not satisfy me. And I think it does not satisfy many people who live in Africa because they understand how our governments operate.

They understand the reality versus the sentiment. So the sentiment is, African government should do more. The reality is that it's likely not going to happen in the next decade.

There may be marginal improvements, but life sciences research is extremely expensive. Our governments, even if they are more efficient, are working with limited budgets and have a large number of competing interests.

We have serious infrastructure needs in our countries. We have serious social and economic needs in our countries.

As important as I think life science research is, it is difficult to justify the level of expense or level expenditure in life science that is required when you don't have good roads, drinking water, and schools. And so the reality is African governments are limited in what they can do, even if they really want to.

And so then the question is, what else can be done? And that's what led me down this path of private sector. I felt that the other source of money was investment.

And I felt that Africans needed to establish private sector, basically a life science or a biotech private sector, similar to what you have in Europe, North America and Asia. And actually, as I dug more, I realized that despite the U.S. having an NIH with a 40 to 45 billion dollars annual budget, 75% of R&D in the U.S.

actually happened in the private sector. So even with such huge investments publicly into life science, it was less than 25% of the total investment in the country into research.

And so I realized in Africa, we're perhaps asking the wrong question, missing out on three quarters of the pie by exclusively focusing on what government needs to do to support research, when the private sector actually should be enabled to carry the larger share of the burden. So Yemaachi is my response to that.

And my hope is that more companies like Yemaachi will emerge in Africa to begin to build an ecosystem that can not only solve locally relevant problems, but can do so in a sustainable way that will ultimately spur economic development on the continent in a way we've never seen.

Claire Murigande

09:29

And now, coming to Yemaachi, what is it exactly? And maybe tell me about the main mission.

So I checked a little bit on your website, and I really like the tagline that says cancer innovation shaped by Africa for the world. So essentially, if I'm coming in here, I have no idea about research science. And I'm like, okay, what is Yemaachi?

It feels to me like something is coming out of the African continent, not only benefiting the continent itself, but it's going to be also benefiting the entire world. Is that a good interpretation?

Yaw Bediako

10:03

Yes, it's an excellent interpretation. I'm happy that our messaging on our website is communicating that, but yes, exactly that. And I can. I can unpack that a little bit.

Yemaachi is a life science company primarily focused on cancer and specifically focused on understanding cancer in people of African descent. Now, the reason we've done that is there are multiple reasons, but I guess I can maybe pick the top three.

Number one, cancer affects everybody globally. One in four people in the world at some point in their life will experience cancer.

Personally, I lost my dad to cancer, and many people have similar experiences. So cancer is important, and it's as important in Africa as anywhere else. You know, we may have other diseases as well, but guess what?

Cancer is rapidly becoming one of the leading causes of mortality on the continent. Secondly, Africa has the most genetically diverse population on the planet. We are the evolutionary home of our species.

And that is not Yaw Bediako saying it. That is scientific, you know, almost dogma. It is accepted that the African continent has more genetic diversity than anywhere else.

And that is because Homo sapiens evolved out of Africa, spent a couple hundred thousand years on the continent, and only relatively recently in evolutionary terms, did Homo sapiens migrate off the continent to other regions to seed other populations, which by extension are much less heterogeneous or much less diverse because only a few individuals left the continent to see these populations.

Claire Murigande

11:44

And that's A very good point, by the way, that we don't stress enough because I also have a scientific background and this is something I didn't learn in school.

Yaw Bediako

11:51

Right, exactly. And I don't know why we don't learn it.

Maybe now, I mean, I need to check genetic textbooks, but it should be, in my opinion, it should be figure one, you know, where do we come from? We come from Africa.

But anyway, so because of that genetic diversity, genomes across Africa should be central to our understanding of the human race, to our understanding of the links between disease or genetics and disease and cancer. At its root is a genetic disease, either one you inherit or one you develop by some mutations that occur during your lifetime.

But at the end of the day, cancer originates from your DNA. And so if we want to treat cancer more precisely, then we need to understand the genetic basis of that.

You know, now, in the age of precision medicine, that is happening, unfortunately, and this is the third reason why Yemaachi does what we do. Africa is the least sequenced continent. So less than 3% of genomic data available around the world is from people of African descent.

Almost 80% of it comes from people of European ancestry, who I have said themselves represent 10% of the world's population and are much less genetically diverse. So you have an issue where most of your precision medicine that has been developed so far is really tailor made for a small subset of the human race.

And this is not really an ethnic thing. It's not black, white, it's not race. It is genetic diversity. So human beings are diverse regardless of where they come from, geographically.

But as I said, people from Africa are very diverse. So you can find many different flavors of human beings, of the Homo sapiens species on the African continent.

And so when your research is very limited to a particular group, then you have large numbers of people who are not included. And some of those people will be Caucasian, some of those people will be Asians, many of them will be African.

And so you have a situation where precision medicine is not really developing tools that are effective across the broadest cross section of our species.

And so what we are trying to do at Yemaachi is say, can we leverage the world's most genetically diverse population, that is the African population, to generate data that extends our understanding of cancer to the benefit of people all over the world. And so that's what we mean by innovation from Africa to the world.

And I personally, as a Pan Africanist, as a proud African, I also like that narrative that for too long Africa has been painted as requiring Saving as requiring help as the most impoverished region in the world.

Through the work at Yemaachi, we want to demonstrate that Africa has a role to play to help the rest of the world, that the science we do within Africa will benefit people in America, in Europe and in Asia and in Latin America. So I think that is, you know, from broad strokes, that is what we seek to do.

And so the goal is to build up significant data from cancer patients across the African continent and use that data as the basis for much more inclusive research into novel therapies, novel diagnostics that will serve people in Africa, but also importantly, serve people all over the world.

Claire Murigande

15:19

And so when you say building this database across the continent, you are based now in Ghana. Explain to me how you're actually operating. You know, do you have collaborations? This is also how research works, Right?

You partner with different institutions. So who are you working with and which countries? Because you said you started operations in 2021, so it's quite recent. Right. So where are you now?

And like, what is your aspiration?

Yaw Bediako

15:46

Yes, so exactly. Our goal is not the Ghanaian genome or the Nigerian genome.

Our goal is the African genome or genomes, because there's no such thing as an African genome. And so because of that, even though, yes, we are very young, we're very. We're very small, we still have a lot more money to raise.

We began from the very beginning to try to build a network across Africa. So we're headquartered in Accra, that is currently our main base of operation.

But we have partners now in a total of nine African countries, including Ghana. And these partners are primarily clinical facilities, places where people with cancer would seek care.

So we have partners in West Africa from, you know, from Senegal, Cote d'ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria. We have partners in North Africa and Tunisia.

We have partners in East Africa, in Kenya, Uganda, and then we have partners in Zimbabwe, in Southern Africa, and also some technical partners in South Africa. And that is the network we've built so far. We actually call it Afrikan. So Afri can. The African Cancer Network.

You'll find that out on our website as well. And really, this is a community we're trying to build.

It is a community of people who are encountering cancer in their working life, primarily clinicians who are treating people with cancer.

But they're trying to link them with both our capacity as life scientists and within the work we are doing, but also use as opportunity to have other linkages outside of the continent. So as a small company, we have to leverage partnerships as well as we can and so we have academic partners in the US and in Europe and in Asia.

We have commercial partners in some of these places as well.

And so the goal is how can we leverage the work we are doing to draw more attention to what's happening on the continent and try to promote equitable partnership that benefits all sides.

Claire Murigande

17:45

And you know, now we are in.

The AI era, right? I mean, it feels like it's just the beginning, even though things are evolving very, very quickly. So how do you leverage tech in your work?

Is it something that's really helping you advance very quickly, or do you see maybe some gaps because you need to work with different entities on the continent? And obviously it's a huge continent. Right.

And even here in Europe, I'm just talking, for example, Switzerland, we have, you know, every hospital in every canton, like every state might even have like a different system, which things challenging. Even though tech is really the way to harmonize, if you will.

So how are you leveraging tech and how do you see AI maybe playing a role in what you do?

Yaw Bediako

18:26

Well, tech is very important. I mean, as we take the tech in our biotech very seriously. In fact, currently I think we are more of a tech bio than a biotech.

And we can discuss the distinguishing features if we want. We will probably evolve more into biotech as our R&D expands. But currently Yemaachi is very much a tech bio company.

And what I mean by that is we leverage technology in every facet of what we do. Obviously, genomics is highly technical. Not just anyone can sequence, especially sequence a human genome. It's not trivial.

And so we have that capacity. In fact, we are the first lab in Ghana to sequence a human genome, and one of only a few, I think, on the African continent who have that capacity.

So that sort of molecular bio technology is what we have. But we also leverage technology in other ways. So just as important as a genome is a clinical data.

Anyone who does this kind of research will explain to you that you can have someone's genome, but if we you don't understand their clinical history or their clinical sort of outcomes, it makes it very difficult to make sense of the genome. Because the whole idea of genomics is to link genetic traits with phenotypes. And so you need both phenotype and genotype to make those comparisons.

And as you said, I mean, if Switzerland is complicated, imagine what 54 countries in Africa are like with different languages, different levels of capacity. Clinical data is very difficult to standardize in Africa.

It's very difficult to collect, especially for disease like cancer Many countries don't even have registries.

One of my co founders, David Hutchful, who's our cto, has a background in sort of trying to build software to solve problems, including healthcare problems. And so he leads our team of engineers to build software to support especially the data capture work that we do.

So we've launched an app we call Uvosio, which standardizes our clinical data capture. And so we are now able to collect structured clinical information from more multiple sites where we work.

And it's standardized across Francophone or Anglophone.

And so in that way, we're able to make sure that the data we collect is as accurate and as standardized as possible, which means it's as comparable as possible. So that's an element of technology that we employ.

On the AI side that is also going to be very important, especially as we continue to advance our R and D. Abdullah Diallo, who leads our bioinformatics and computational bio, is a very highly experienced, highly regarded AI specialist.

He's based out of Canada, and so he's our chief of bioinformatics and AI, and so he leads our computational team.

So we are building that capacity to, as we generate more data, AI will allow us to begin to analyze that data in a much more efficient way and really begin to integrate different streams of data as we seek to draw out the most important insights. So that work is coming. And then there are other ways we are looking to explore AI. These days, large language models are very popular.

You know, when you think of extracting data from multiple sources, some of which could be paper notes, there is more and more technology that leverages AI that supports that. So we have a variety of ways that we're looking to do it. And I specifically mentioned the people who are leading this because I'm an immunologist.

That's not my area. But it's to show that we actually have African people who have this experience. Yemaachi is not against hiring anybody from anywhere.

I mean, we probably will. And I look forward to the days when, you know, people in anywhere just send applications, want to move to Accra or move to Nairobi to work with us.

But what we've tried to do is assemble a team of very talented Africans with global experience in these areas. So I think with Yemaachi, what I'm trying to do is model the Africa that I believe exists, not necessarily the one that you see on the news.

And I think we do that sometimes through the kinds of work we do, but also the people who lead these work.

Claire Murigande

22:18

I was actually going to ask you about your team, because you mentioned a couple of people and whether there was an intention at that's what you just said, to create an African team. So tell me about the process.

First of all, were these people you already knew before you even started Yemaachi, or did you really have to really go out there and seek them and convince them to join Yemaachi?

Yaw Bediako

22:39

It's a bit of a mix. Some of the people that are on our team are people I've known for a while, especially early on.

You know, the very first people you pull into a harebrained idea like starting a biotech company in Africa are people who probably have to know you. They have to trust me. They have to trust that this idea may be crazy, but perhaps we can actually make it happen. So I've leveraged some of that.

But as that has happened, then we each have our own networks. And so you pull in one person, they can pull in two or three people from their networks who they have some influence with.

And so we've organically grown the team.

I think everybody on our team at any level of the company understands the vision they are here because they want to be part of something big, something new, something exciting, and ultimately something that is for Africa and good for Africa. And so that is how I have tried to stitch this team together.

Obviously, as a young, small startup, you can't afford to pay people what they really could get elsewhere. So there's a lot of vision and motivation that I have to do, but that's part of my role as a CEO, is to keep my team motivated. They keep us together.

It's not always easy. We're humans, we disagree, times get hard, friction increases. But so far, I think I'm managing to keep the ship moving in the right direction.

And so I have some very, very talented, very bright, motivated people. I'm happy to say we have a good gender balance. Yemaachi is over 50% female, and we're very proud of that fact.

It's also what we want to model, to demonstrate. I don't believe Africa is a male chauvinistic society. I don't think traditionally we are that.

I would argue perhaps certain elements in our history, external influences, have maybe exacerbated some of those things. I think traditionally in many of our cultures, there is very good respect between genders.

But anyway, that aside, Yemaachi is striving to be an inclusive and a balanced environment.

And so I think coming from an academic background where everybody around me was like me, I'm having to Learn how to interact with very different groups of people. I have people in my team who are not scientists. They have a finance background or they have an admin background or a human resources background.

The last time they took science was probably high school, you know, second year high school and they dropped it because they hated biology.

So it is about communicating what we do to those people, but also listening because they have great inputs into how to run a business, how to design a business that I don't have. So I think that's how we're beginning to gel as a team. Learning to respect each other's opinions. It's not always easy.

Obviously there will be ups and downs, but I think the challenge for me has been how do I myself learn to appreciate other opinions and other backgrounds that are different from mine and recognize their importance in trying to shape what is a very diverse and if we're to be successful, has to be a very robust company in many different areas.

Claire Murigande

25:36

It sounds like a very transformative process as well for you, right? Coming from science and academia?

Yaw Bediako

25:42

Oh yes, yes. I'm changing a lot, hopefully for the better, but I'm learning.

I mean, I've always tried to keep an open mind and yeah, nothing will humble you than trying to do something you've never done before. So the learning curve for me has been extremely steep.

I don't have an mba, I've not don't have any formal business training, and yet I'm talking to investors almost every day.

I'm trying to raise money, I'm worrying about many different things for which I in some ways have not been adequately prepared for from an academic perspective.

But having said that, once again, when I talk to young scientists, I also stress that the training we get as life scientists to get PhDs actually does things to us or expands our abilities in ways we don't really understand. The soft skills you learn From a good PhD experience can be translated into many different things. And so I'm leaning on that.

Obviously I have to work hard and learn, but once again I assimilate information quickly because I've had to do that as a trainee scientist. And so now I'm not learning about cellular structures, I'm learning our business models, but it's still information.

And so I think as life scientists, we, especially as Africa hopes to grow a biotech ecosystem, more life scientists have to go into business. But I don't think we should be afraid.

We should keep an open mind, be humble, surround ourselves, people who know what they're talking about that we can learn from.

But also believe in your innate, your ability that has been honed over years of sitting in a lab or reading journals, or just the work of being an academic scientist, writing articles, giving presentations, posters.

All of those skills, if harnessed properly, make you a very effective communicator, which is about probably 75, 80% of what you need to do to run a business. And so I think those are the things I'm leaning on and I think I'm doing reasonably well at so far.

Claire Murigande

27:34

So coming back to being a young startup and having to deal with things you've never done before.

You mentioned previously that you're still raising money, and this is one question I always ask my guests on the podcast because many of them are also entrepreneurs and founders. And getting the funding and raising money is always an immense challenge, which actually never stops.

So tell me about that process for you and how has it been so far?

And especially, you know, now you're running this company from the African continent, but you said that you also have partners outside of the continent and where does the capital come from and which different people or organization have you had to reach out to have this funding going for?

Yaw Bediako

28:17

Yemaachi, this is the biggest headache for anyone trying to run a business, especially from the continent and especially in life science, because our work is extremely capital intensive. So it is extremely difficult. And by no means do I believe that we have cracked it yet. We're still having to grind and grind really hard.

We've managed to attract support from a variety of places. We have a few grants from large philanthropic organizations.

Gates Foundation, Life Arc recently are part of a consortium that is funded by the NIH and Cancer Research uk.

But as a for profit company, sometimes our grant opportunities, especially in the life science space, are a little bit limited because many of these grants, especially the ones that come to Africa, are tailored for nonprofit, either academic or NGO type organizations. You know, the same is not true in the us. There are many startups like us who get lots of grant money from the NIH and other places.

But you know, once again, unfortunately, when you know the structure's in place to support work in Africa, have historically focused primarily on public sector or in the nonprofit sector, something I hope to be able to advocate for change for, because those two sectors do not build sustainability, it's the business sector that builds sustainability.

But of course, when the agency's funding themselves are charitable, they have to be careful where their money goes to maintain their charitable status. And so sometimes it's the legal side that gets in the way of things. So A majority of our funding has come from venture capital.

And while we have some money from a few sort of larger funds, I always like to point out that the very first money I ever was able to raise came from ordinary diaspora Africans, you know, working professionals, doctors, engineers, ordinary people who resonated with the vision of Yemaachi and were willing to put, even though not themselves very wealthy, they were, you know, middle, upper middle class people. They were willing to put a little bit of their resource towards Yemaachi. That's the little seed that got our ball rolling.

And subsequently we have managed to begin to get on the radar of a few other funds. We went through Y Combinator. So YC is, you know, for those in the startup world who know about yc, it's probably the.

Well, according to yc, and I am a YC founder, so I guess I should say this too. It is probably the premier accelerator, tech accelerator in the world. It's based in Silicon Valley, extremely competitive to get in.

Only a few, I mean relatively few African companies have made it into YC. We were one of 15 in our batch of about, about over 300 companies from a pool of 15,000. So everybody wants to get into YC everywhere in the world.

So we were fortunate to get into YC and that certainly gave us a higher profile and enabled us to raise a bit more money from US based investors. So we have money from angels, we have monies from impact funds focused on Africa.

So there are a few funds that are looking to support innovative work in Africa and we have a few investments from there. We have a few investments from Europe and Asia. So family offices or investment funds. Once again, looking at Africa.

So we have quite a diverse portfolio and the challenge for us now is as we scale, beginning to break into the top sort of tech VCs or biotech VCs. Unfortunately there aren't really any of those in Africa. So those are typically on the east coast of the US or Silicon Valley or maybe in Europe.

And up until now they don't really have much experience with Africa.

So that is the next challenge for Yemaachi is to break into that upper echelon of investors who historically have only invested in North America or Europe. Biotech companies. Biotech represents a bit of a niche area for venture capital and they typically focus on markets they know and understand.

Africa attracts I think less than 4% of global VC money already. So it's already a very small slice. And historically Africa hasn't had much biotech.

So most of the investors who invest in Africa don't really do life science.

So that's kind of where we are but you know, cautiously optimistic that, you know, as we demonstrate what we can do, we'll begin to turn the eyes of investors like that towards the work that we're doing as well.

Claire Murigande

32:31

And you just mentioned that Africa hasn't had that many biotechs. So can you tell me about the landscape right now?

How does it look like maybe if not only biotech, if you extend a bit more into the life sciences, what are we looking at today in 2024?

Yaw Bediako

32:45

I mean, it's pretty barren. I mean to put it bluntly, the startup scene in Africa is growing.

We've had a bit of a contraction post Covid, but we were approaching about 6 to 7 billion dollars in VC money in Africa. Now that is compared to the 2 or 300 billion that goes into VCs all over the world. You can see how small our ecosystem is.

Tech has been a big part of that, but mostly fintech. So the most successful startups you see in Africa are the, you know, the big fintechs like Flutterwave and agriculture.

Agtech is coming up, so there's some agricultural initiatives. There are some people doing infrastructure, obviously energy, renewables, life science.

Unfortunately many people think of life science as academic activity. There are very few life science research companies in Africa, one or two in South Africa.

On the pharmaceutical manufacturing side, there are some companies in North Africa like in Egypt. Egypt has a pretty strong pharmaceutical manufacturing base so they do some R and D.

But your typical biotech sort of company, the way you'd see in Silicon Valley or in Europe where you do early discovery based R and D is almost non existent in Africa. I think Yemaachi is one of the few to be doing this.

And so it's hard going because there are not very many comps to point to, which means investors are harder to convince that it's doable. But the need is undeniable and I think the opportunities are there. It is just we need to build adequate capacity.

We need to challenge ourselves to ask if our universities are actually putting out adequate talent capable of rising to these challenges. So you know, we train a lot of people, but how well do we train them or what do we train them on? How translatable are their skills?

I think these are questions that their constant is facing in life sciences. Over the last 20 years, thanks to primarily philanthropic support, there's been a big push to do capacity building.

So the response to Africa's health challenges has been let's train more doctors, let's train more PhDs, let's train more researchers. So a lot of money has been pumped into training. Admittedly, I think the universities in many African countries are strengthened because of it.

However, I would argue that capacity building without job creation is not real capacity building.

So while we have focused almost exclusively on training, we basically trained up a generation of people who don't have very many options on the continent. So outside of academic jobs in life sciences, there isn't much else.

And so I find that the best of our products get scooped up eventually by the west.

So we end up in my opinion, making the brain drain more expensive because now we're training them to get a PhD and then they leave, as opposed to letting them leave after high school school. So I think that is once again though the role of industry.

You know, who is going to give that sharp bioinformatics student, that brilliant immunologist, a chance to do work that is really cutting edge and exciting. It's going to be a startup or a pharmaceutical company. I mean, if you look in the U.S.

you know, people want to go to Genentech, they want to go to Roche, they want to go to Merck, they want to go to Pfizer, they want to start up their own company. We don't have those opportunities in Africa yet. But I think that's where we need to open up and I think that is what we hope Yemaachi can be part of.

So I think that is where we are.

We are very good at training, we're getting better at training, but I fear we are not putting enough attention towards what they do after they are trained in creating non academic options for people locally. And I think that is because the sources of capacity building funds are philanthropic and so they don't translate well into business. Right.

And so we need to either begin to encourage philanthropy, to view commercial as part of the process, or find other ways to stimulate local establishment and emergence of private sector initiatives that can begin to absorb the talent and ultimately reinforce the training wheel by supporting the training institutions. So I think we have the potential, but currently the ecosystem is extremely weak.

Claire Murigande

36:57

So what can we expect from Yamatchi in the next, I would say five to 10 years. Right. How could people now envision the future through Yemaachi?

Yaw Bediako

37:06

I mean look, I am a person of faith by God's grace, inshallah, you know, in five years Yemaachi will have established itself as a viable leading research upstart from Africa. We will have expanded our reach hopefully to double digit numbers of countries.

We will have operations In a few of these countries, I'm very keen to build regional capacity so that it's not all Accra centered. We already have a satellite lab in Nairobi. In five years, I hope we'd have at least one or two more of these satellites.

I think importantly, we would have well established links with global pharma. I'm not naive to think that we can do this without them. We cannot. However, we want to work with them on our terms.

And I think that is a unique twist Yemaachi brings. Lately I'm realizing I need to sort of justify why we need work with pharma.

You know, pharma is often painted in a certain way, and yes, I think sometimes justifiably so. However, the world is the way it is and you have to work within those systems. Africa cannot afford to be ignored any further.

But Africa currently does not have the capacity to play at the world stage as an equal. And so what we need to do is to begin to build that capacity, but it'll take some time.

And in my opinion, the way to do that is to partner, but partner on our terms.

And I believe that Yemaachi and companies like us would be best positioned to partner as opposed to academic institutions simply trying to partner with pharma. There's a role for that, it happens in the us but we also need industry to industry partnership, corporate to corporate partnership.

And so my hope is that in five years Yemaachi will have established itself as a key partner for pharma in Africa.

Not doing the bidding of farmer in Africa, but instead representing Africa to the world and ensuring that pragmatically work is happening that includes Africa, but at least is done so on terms that are more favorable to the continent.

And not to stop there, but we continue to march forward so that in 10 years or 15 years, Africa can point to a pharmaceutical giant that emanates from the continent. I think that's what we want to do. Japan has several. Japan is a tiny island.

Africa is a continent of 1.4 billion people and cannot points to a global leader in pharma. That has to change, but it will only change if we take the incremental steps that are needed and if we put ourselves in the positions to succeed.

And so I hope that our example will spur many more people to join and we'll have a much richer and stronger ecosystem in Africa and many innovative and exciting startups emerging to really begin to lift up the sort of aggregate ecosystem. And yeah, I'd hope we would be in the center of that activity.

Claire Murigande

39:58

And Just to close a final question, what would be your advice for.

I would say young or maybe even less younger scientists, whether they're in the diaspora or on the continent, who see you as a role model and who also like to sort of contribute, but in their own way. So what would be your advice to them?

Yaw Bediako

40:15

Well, I think the first thing is don't give up on Africa. Don't be fatalistic. Africa has its problems, but Africa has immense potential.

Having said that, though, we will never achieve that potential if we don't fold up our sleeves and work. Lately, I think somebody wants. I can't remember who said it, so it wasn't me, but I use it these days, is agonize less and organize more.

And so I think whether it's in the diaspora, on the continent, we can complain to a red in the face, nothing will change, or we can organize ourselves. And so each of us has a role to play.

Whether you are based in the diaspora and you contribute remotely or you decide to relocate, or you're already in the continent and decide to start something. I think we have to think outside the box. We have to think commercial. I mean, I don't say this in terms of just money. We need to think sustainability.

And so we need to think how do we move the needle where Africa is not just receiving handouts, but Africa is actually giving handouts to other people. And that means we need to generate resource.

We have raw resources, but in order to make those resources really work for us, we need to invest in value addition locally. Now, that goes for our commodities as much as it goes for our science.

And I think for too long we've not thought of science as a commodity that we need to add value to. You know, as scientists, we are the ones to do that. The business people cannot, the finance people cannot. They can support you.

But as scientists, we have to begin to think, how do we add value? How do we generate value? Ultimately, how do we generate intellectual property that has value that can reside on the African continent?

So my challenge to everyone is organized, but organize in a way that will generate the resources to sustain the initiative. And that cannot be focusing entirely on grants. It has to be, how does this become commercial or commercializable?

And the final thing I'll say is it doesn't have to be all commercial.

You can have a number of commercial sort of areas in your business or in what you do to support the less commercial, much more intellectual dalliances that you want to have, that is fine, but somebody has to pay the bill. And for too Long. We expect Bill Gates to pay the bill for the science in Africa. And where did his money come from?

His money came from building a company, one of the biggest in the world. So why don't we cut out the middleman and build our own companies?

Claire Murigande

42:4

And I like this concept of thinking of science as a commodity, which has not been in the minds before.

Yaw Bediako

42:46

But it's a huge commodity in big economies. I mean, it's why many of these economies are as big. Korea, Singapore, they invested in science, they invested in technology.

I mean, Samsung, Kia, I mean, they just invested in technology. And technology is science. I mean, you can't distinguish the two. It's just that we tend to think of science as people in white lab coats in a school.

And other people think of science as flying cars and really cool tech or really great drugs. And we need to change our mindset to realize that.

In my opinion, the future of Africa's economies could be determined by our scientific output, not by gold or oil or ore from the ground. Those would be extras. But if we can transform our economies with technology and with knowledge, then that's really exciting.

Because, you know, what natural resources does Singapore have? It's a tiny city state, and yet so much technology and so much economic growth. Growth.

So much wealth emanates from there because they develop technology. So I think that's what we need to try to do in Africa.

Claire Murigande