World Malaria Day 2025: MARC SE-Africa brings together malaria researchers in a bid to strengthen collaboration
More than two hundred and fifty malaria researchers answered an invitation by MARC SE-Africa and registered for a virtual writing workshop earlier this week, demonstrating the need for strengthened collaboration, data sharing, and mutual support. The retreat was led and presented by the University of Cape Town (UCT) team and featured contributions from leading experts, including Prof Karen Barnes, Dr Stephanie van Wyk, and Dr Jonathan Gwasupika. It was held completely online, making the event accessible and easy to join from around the world.
The workshop aimed to encourage data sharing and networking between those researching malaria and supporting them in crafting clear narratives and writing manuscripts. Participants ranged from PhD students to representatives of national malaria programmes, with early-career researchers representing the most significant share of participants. They called in from 39 countries, 95 per cent of whom were based in malaria-endemic regions across Africa. Nigeria, Uganda, and Ghana were the most represented countries.
A word cloud showing where the malaria research attendees joined the workshop from.
Through their ongoing work, the MARC SE-Africa consortium identified a critical issue - a large time gap between the generation of data regarding malaria resistance and antimalaria drug efficacy, and its publishing. As presented by Prof Karen Barnes during the introductory session, the time from when data is collected to publication has gotten longer recently, taking between 2-5 years in 2020 - 2024. The work MARC SE-Africa is doing to expedite data sharing and support the timely translation of malaria-related evidence into policy is therefore more important than ever.
MARC SE-Africa digital health resources play an important role in offering easily accessible tools for malaria researchers, mainly by collating the various data sources and providing the latest evidence on malaria drug efficacy. Dr Stephanie van Wyk presented some of the key resources to the participants, including:
MARC SE-Africa dashboard, which offers researchers a range of up-to-date data on antimalarial drug resistance, including on the prevalence of Kelch 13 mutations and recent outcomes of therapeutic efficacy studies. It also allows for cross-border insight between different countries, the importance of which was recently seen in the creation of a new Kenya-Uganda cross-border initiative.
MOXIE-BOT, a chatbot tool that offers resources that can aid malaria researchers at different stages of their work.
Malaria Authors’ Collective, a new WhatsApp group led by the MARC SE-Africa coordinating institution UCT, allows malaria researchers to share workshops, webinars, funding opportunities and technical support among each other.
Additional workshops on this day equipped attendees with practical skills and research communication strategies relevant to experienced and early-career scientists. The topics included:
importance of timely data sharing to inform the response to drug-resistant malaria in Africa
strategies for formatting manuscripts to meet journal requirements
practical writing tools for precise and impactful scientific communication
techniques for effective data visualisation
analytical insights gained through advanced statistical approaches
This collaborative event reinforced the value of timely scientific communication in supporting malaria control efforts and informed decision-making across national and regional programmes. MARC SE-Africa partners are motivated by the numerous and committed participants who joined the webinar and look forward to further expanding the network and range of resources for malaria researchers.
