TheISCB Africa ASBCB Conference on Bioinformatics is a biennialacademic conference on the subjects ofbioinformatics andcomputational biology, organized by theAfrican Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB) in conjunction with theInternational Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), of which the ASBCB is an African affilliate.

The conference was first held in 2007 as the "ASBCB Conference on the Bioinformatics of African Pathogens, Hosts and Vectors"^[1].

Since 2009, the conference has been jointly organized with theInternational Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and held in different locations within Africa.^[13] Although having an evident African focus, the meeting is intended to be a truly international event, encompassing scientists and students from leading institutions in the US, Latin America, Europe and Africa. Holding this event in Africa, ISCB and ASBCB intend to promote local efforts for cooperation and dissemination of leading research techniques to combat major African diseases.

In combination with theISCB, with its global perspective, one goal of the ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference is to expose and educate both junior and established scientists to the latest bioinformatics tools and techniques so that they can be used in researching treatments and cures, in the African context of theASBCB, focusing on hosts, vectors and disease.

As a conference that involves participants from countries across Africa and elsewhere, a second, but definitely not lesser, goal of the ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference is to improve existing capacity for public health interventions in African countries by supporting collaboration and establishing networks for development and training. This builds upon the activities of theASBCB outside of the conference, for example in supporting the H3ABioNet project^[14] and its successor actions.

The meeting usually consists of a 3-day conference followed by practical workshops.

Senior speakers with affiliations or backgrounds in different African countries give keynote talks. At the 2025 ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference on Bioinformatics^[15] the keynote speakers wereAlan Christoffels^[16], Alia Ben Khala^[17], Anne von Gottburg^[18] and Aida Ouangraoua^[19].

In addition to keynote talks, a lot of time at the conference is available for other speakers across the broad range of topics covered^[15]. These range from introductions to computational techniques such asmachine learning applicable to bioinformatics, to reports on progress ongenomics and otheromics analysis. Other talks focus on thepublic health problems that many African countries face with the control oftropical diseases. Virtual presentations can also be included from international bioinformatics organisations such asEMBL-EBI.

ISCB Africa ASBCB Conferences on Bioinformatics are useful not just in attracting media attention for the conferences themselves but for increasing understanding of the implications of bioinformatics in the wider world^[20][21].

TheISCB has a Student Council^[22] that organises symposia, workshops and networking sessions within conferences organised by the ISCB. A Student Symposium is organised at each ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference through the Regional Student Group structure of theISCB Student Council^[23]. This is an opportunity for students and other early-career researchers to present reports on their ongoing projects and to hear advice from other conference attendees^[24].

Because bioinformatics depends so much on skills in using tools to analyse biological data (seebioinformatics databases andbioinformatics software tools for examples) the workshops and tutorials that are held in conjunction with each ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference on Bioinformatics may be the most important outcome of each one.

Immediately prior to the 2011 conference inCape Town, participants gathered at theUniversity of the Western Cape for a workshop on the bioinformatics tool eBioKit^[25].Immediately following the 2021 meeting theASBCB collaborated with theNational Institutes of Health Office of Data Science Strategy^[26] in delivering an online Omics Codeathon^[27].

Tutorials held at the 2025^[15] ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference on Bioinformatics introduced the Afrigen-D (African Genomics Data Hub)^[28], as well as thecobrapy package for constraint-based modelling of metabolic networks at a genomic scale^[29].

In parallel with the rest of the programme there are poster sessions^[30], allowing researchers to present their on-going activities in a concise form and to discuss it with other conference attendees.

Since 2009, the ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference has been partnering with theInfection, Genetics and Evolution journal to publish papers presented at the conference^[1]. More recently the Bioinformatics Gateway^[31] of theF1000 online publishing platform^[32] in collaboration with theISCB has provided an additional means of publishing material from the conference^[33].

• Bioinformatics
• Biology conferences
• Computer science conferences
• Recurring events established in 2007

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