Christian Happi

Christian Happi is a Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology and Genomics in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Director of the Institute of Genomics and Global Health (formerly African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases), both at Redeemer’s University. He is known for leading the team of scientists that used genomic sequencing to identify a single point of infection from an animal reservoir to a human in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. His research focus is on infectious diseases, including malaria, Lassa fever, Ebola virus disease, HIV, and SARS-CoV-2. Christian Happi has been described as a force of nature in TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2025. Quotes I’m a distinguished professor of Molecular Biology and Genomics, and the founder and the director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Disease at Redeemer’s University. This center, founded in 2013, has been addressing the issues related to infectious diseases, and specifically epidemics, in Africa. We’ve been involved in multiple epidemics and transforming outbreak and epidemic response based on some innovations that we brought on board, starting with the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014. So we’ve been in this space for almost a decade. We are a pretty young organization, but I think people often think that we’re old, because of the impact that we’ve made and the transformation we’ve brought into the field with our approaches to infectious disease research in Africa, and also issues related to capacity-building, and training and infrastructure development. Interview response to the question 'Can you start by introducing yourself and your organization, and talk broadly about the problem that you’re working on and how you’re trying to solve it?' The people that benefit from my work are primarily the patients, and then indirectly the clinical team working with those patients, and then the government – at local level, at national level and at the level of the continent of Africa. We believe that we have been able to impact very positively not only these patients, but in a very transformative way we’ve impacted the whole of the continent and the global health community. Interview response to the question 'Who do you work with most directly? Who are the people that you’re serving and how do you engage with them? Who benefits from your work?' We first of all identify problems, and then we need to work with the community and identify what the issues are, and then discuss with them and see what solutions are needed. So we’re more solution-oriented. Then we can look for resources and bring the solution closer to the patients in a way that we can directly impact their lives, and then also transform the way, for instance, those patients are managed in their communities. This is a disease that can be treated with the molecule called Ribavirin, but when a patient reports late, that molecule is often not effective. So how do we bring diagnosis closer to the patient? We went back and used the partial sequence of the virus that was available at the time to create the molecular diagnostics. And we brought the molecular diagnostics with equipment and the tools to do the diagnostics in a very rural hospital in Nigeria, and we did the very first molecular diagnostics in Nigeria at the time, trained people on the ground to do the diagnostics. Interview response to the question 'How specifically do you engage with people? How do you work with the people who are benefiting from your work?' I think what makes it a bit different is that we are an organization that is in Africa, that is invested in identifying and solving problems within the continent. We don’t parachute in just when there’s a problem. We’re in, we live within those communities. We discuss with the communities, we know exactly what their problems are, and we also discuss what they believe the solutions could be. Interview response to the question 'I was going to ask you for an example that illustrates impact, and that’s a pretty dramatic one. What do you think makes your approach distinctive from other organizations that are working in this space and on similar problems?' I think that it is important to be intentional. It’s very important to be boots on the ground. It is important to do long-term investment. Let’s not be investing when there is a crisis, let’s invest for the future. Let’s build the human resources that are necessary in times of trouble. Let’s be intentional in terms of using science for what I call public good, and then let’s use this as a way to help patient management. Let’s create the methods and tools that are user-friendly and in the communities where we are. Let’s make sure that we can actually translate science in a way that the person in the most remote place in the world can use it to respond or to help us detect either an existing virus or an existing pathogen or suspect the emergence of a new pathogen. Interview response to the question 'You’ve talked a lot about this in different ways already, but what do you think the insights or the lessons are that can be taken from your work that other people can learn from?' I think there are several ways you can measure success. For us, one of the evidence to say that we’re making progress is the fact that you create something that is accepted. I gave you an example of how you bring diagnostics into the community. You not only transform patient management, you reduce the burden of the disease, and you also build confidence in the population. That for me is success. Success is also when you are creating a method for outbreak response that gets adopted by the national public health institution and by the global community. Success is when you really empower people in Africa or in the places where the disease risk is higher, to be those people that can help you identify the risk and the problems and also try to help solve the problem. Interview response to the question 'How do you measure success? What evidence do you use to see that you are making progress?' Absolutely. There are a few things we tried that didn’t work. During the Ebola outbreak, I would’ve loved to have real-time data transfer and real-time data sharing – whereby the minister of health within the region could have the data in the dashboard in front of him each time any test is done or any confirmed test is positive. At that time I did try, but unfortunately I didn’t have the resources. But that actually bolstered my stamina because after that, we went on to say, “We really need to design this system”, that we call Sentinel, that Skoll Foundation funded. Interview response to the question 'Sometimes we learn as much from things that don’t work as things that do. Is there something that you tried that didn’t work that you learned an important lesson from?' Absolutely. I expect scalability to be a challenge, acceptability to be a challenge. Innovation is often not that easy because people don’t want to change the way they do things. Of course, those are major, major challenges. In a way, for organizations like ours – how do I put it? – I think one of the biggest challenges is actually to have your voice heard in the community of people who have been thinking a certain way and do not really see the value of what you’re doing, simply because they have some vested interests. We’re pretty much in the vanguard of solving problems without ulterior motives and then empowering local people. Unfortunately, you meet strong resistance. Interview response to the question 'Setting aside the issue of funding, because every organization working on social problems struggles with funding, are there challenges that you are still working to overcome that you haven’t solved yet? Things like scalability or opposition?' External links Category:1968 births Category:Living people Category:Scientists from Cameroon Category:Biologists Category:Geneticists