The African Biomedical Engineering Consortium (ABEC)
ABEC
The mission of healthcare systems in Africa to deliver compassionate and effective care has been constrained by growing populations, increasing burden of disease, political conflict, and limited resources. The impacts of these constraints can be substantially alleviated, and the healthcare services strengthened, through the creation and adoption of affordable, accessible, and appropriate biomedical engineering systems and technologies. There is an urgent need for building capacities in biomedical engineering, innovation, research, and entrepreneurship in African countries.
The African Biomedical Engineering Consortium (ABEC) is an initiative propagating biomedical engineering for improved health-care outcomes in Africa. ABEC brings together different stakeholders that share in the goal of transforming health service delivery and economy of Africa through engineering, innovation, research, and entrepreneurship. These include: Academic institutions, industry partners, research institutions, businesses, Individual entrepreneurs and innovators, Innovation accelerators, funding entities, Philanthropists, governments, multilateral bodies and non-African Well-wishers.
ABEC is an initiative for Africa and by Africans that was inspired by United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) under the patronage of Dr Victor Konde. ECA encouraged and supported the formation of the ABEC at the very first innovators’ summer school, in Uganda in 2012 and supported its subsequent implementation. Later, in 2020, ABEC was fully incorporated as a legal entity (Reg No: 80020002433980) in Uganda. ABEC has its coordination/head offices in Mbarara City, housed within the premises of Soar Research Foundation (Google Maps address: 9JXG+Q3, Mbarara). Soar Research Foundation has been a long-term research partner of ABEC and has been instrumental in evaluating and disseminating the outputs of the ABEC.
What makes ABEC stand out as a driver of Biomedical Engineering Excellence in Africa?
Having pioneered the drive to promote the establishment of Biomedical Engineering Programs and active innovation ecosystems in African Universities, today, ABEC offers a platform and serves as a central point for harmonizing the efforts of existing and emerging initiatives focused on promoting innovation, Entrepreneurship, Biomedical engineering education and research. ABEC has built a vast pool of Innovators, and faculty in Biomedical engineering either directly or indirectly through its spin-off consortiums and programs that could be leveraged by other stakeholders working on accelerating Innovations, funders and researchers. For over a decade, ABEC has piloted platforms that offer supplemental education to Biomedical Engineers, staff exchanges, academic and research mobilities, which interventions are vital towards bridging the gaps in training given the fast changing and advancements within this discipline, thus promoting harmonization in BME education and quality of graduates with capability to work in different African countries and context. ABEC has for over a decade demonstrated success in maintaining and growing a network of Universities, which is a vital step towards building Africa-wide synergies that could allow for a faster and well-coordinated growth of the biomedical Engineering discipline with benefits to the health service delivery and the economy.
ABEC serves as a multidisciplinary focal point for promoting the application of engineering in healthcare delivery in Africa. This multidisciplinary approach allows ABEC to effectively highlight challenges in healthcare, promote excellence in human capital development and research, encourage entrepreneurship and innovation among students and researchers, and mobilize resources for the development of biomedical engineering as an important field of study and research in Africa, as well as stimulate partnerships among key stakeholders in the African medical devices sector and beyond.
The existence of champions, the multifaceted nature of ABEC, the existence of an annual platform (i.e. Design competitions and innovators’ summer school), the relentless support of UNECA and selfless commitment by its members has determined the success of the Consortium in the past years. Also, the wide variations in technical, scientific and entrepreneurial competencies among involved Universities has helped to galvanize collaboration and seek synergies that are mutually beneficial. ABEC is open to collaborations with like-minded organizations and persons to sustain its long-achieved impacts but also to support emerging initiatives in biomedical Engineering to effectively reach their targeted audiences and desired success.
Key achievements of ABEC
This has been achieved through: development of BME generic curriculum in 2011, offering guidance to African institutions as they develop BME programs, offer external review opportunities for BME curricula and promoted Staff exchanges and academic and research mobilities so as to support BME education.
With varying themes to empower students and researchers with entrepreneurial and innovative skills, and facilitating the design and development of robust, appropriate, and commercially viable medical systems and devices. These events offer opportunities for students/innovators to Learn from BME experts, Private sector, Industry, reputable Innovators, and successful entrepreneurs. These summer schools that rotate from country to Country have offered a great opportunity to innovators in Africa to gain supplementary design and innovation skills, access to mentorship and strategic networking, and offered a broad cultural and geographical exposure to participants.
following a wide consultation process and needs assessment study. This became a starting point for many Universities that would later implement the Biomedical Engineering program. These earlier efforts and the subsequent preliminary BME curricula review study that was conducted by African Biomedical Engineering Mobility and Soar Research Foundation positions ABEC as an entity that can lead in the efforts of harmonizing Biomedical Engineering curricula and education in Africa as it has been done in Europe.