A European Commission official meets ARISE beneficiaries in Cameroon.

The first cohort of beneficiaries of the African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence (ARISE) includes two Cameroonians. During a professional visit to Yaoundé, Wiebke GROTH, in charge of international aid and cooperation for regional and multi-country programmes for Africa at the European Union Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships, took the opportunity to meet the two beneficiaries in their respective working environments (IMPM and CPC) on Friday 11 April 2025.

Protus Arrey TARKANG of the Institut de recherche médicale et d’étude des plantes médicinales (IMPM), whose work focuses on the discovery of new multi-target antimalarial drugs by employing innovative strategies aimed at discovering new anti-infective agents, and Dr. Karl NGU ABANDA of the Centre Pasteur du Cameroun, who is interested in identifying high-risk areas for the transmission of mosquito-borne viruses such as yellow fever, dengue fever and chlamydia. Dr Karl NGU ABANDA of the Centre Pasteur du Cameroun, who is interested in identifying high-risk areas for the transmission of mosquito-borne viruses such as yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya, developing new diagnostic and surveillance tools and establishing sentinel sites for the surveillance of these viruses in Cameroon.

The ARISE initiative of which they are beneficiaries is a research and innovation support programme of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), implemented by the AAS in partnership with the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU). ARISE is funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

At the Centre Pasteur du Cameroun, the diplomat had a brief meeting with Dr. Mirdad KAZANJI, Director General of the CPC, Dr. Sara EYANGOH, Scientific Director (SD) and Prof. Richard NJOUOM, Head of the Virology Department of the same organisation. All these officials agreed that Dr ABANDA was a very dynamic and ambitious researcher. The CPC’s guest was then guided to the medical entomology platform, the malaria laboratory, the bacteriology-mycology-parasitology laboratory and the virology laboratory, to get an idea of the working environment and conditions of the beneficiary of the initiative, of which the EU is one of the donors.