Meet Our Innovation Fellows
Our Fellows are developing bioscience start-ups in nascent deep science ecosystems, and how nurturing translational research on the continent is central to offering commercialisation pathways for these impact-led solutions.
Translating research into an STI diagnostic designed for African women
Fezile Khumalo (PhD) is a Carnegie Junior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Health Sciences’ Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine and Department of Pathology: Division of Virology at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and was an Africa Oxford Health Innovation Fellow in 2023. She is establishing a translational platform within UCT to move more discoveries towards specific diagnostic applications. She is organising resources and expertise to build appropriate prototypes, ensure appropriate use of diagnostic platforms and capture clinical know-how to ensure the diagnostics are appropriate for healthcare settings across Africa. She has experience in the advancement of proof-of-concept studies for potential commercial application of diagnostic tools.
As part of the GIFT team, Fezile is developing a point-of-care lateral flow test to enable screening of BV and STI in asymptomatic women in Low- and Middle- Income Countries (LMICs).
Read more about her work.
Translational research in Africa to address lack of genetic diversity when testing human-drug response
Professor Rose Hayeshi is Director of the DSI/NWU Preclinical Drug Development Platform (PCDDP) and was an Africa Oxford Health Innovation Fellow in 2022. The PCDDP is a hosted research entity in the Faculty of Health Sciences, at North-West University in South Africa. It has an academic arm and a service delivery arm. The academic staff conduct research and supervise post-graduate students, but also participate in contract research.
The PCDDP functions as a national preclinical testing platform. It has established the infrastructure and skills set required to perform various in in vivo studies in rodent models, attracting product developers (drugs, vaccines, phytomedicines) to use of the facility.
The ultimate aim is to create an infrastructure to enable South Africa to play a significant role in the production of pharmaceutical drugs and phyto-medicines, so that novel pharmaceutical products and biologicals, such as vaccines, are developed and produced locally.
Read more about her work.
AfOx Innovation Fellows Alumni
The Africa Oxford Innovation Platform is a growing community of innovators, researchers, and partners committed to transforming ideas into real-world impact.
AfOx provides access to the vibrant innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem of the University of Oxford – one of the world’s leading centres for knowledge exchange. Through this collaboration, African innovators gain access to tools, expertise, and mentorship to help their ideas grow into scalable, high-impact ventures.
This approach supports the creation of pre-seed and seed-stage deep science start-ups, providing the foundation for long-term structural change in Africa’s innovation landscape.
"Building a strong network of African entrepreneurial innovators in deep science is high priority. It is central to creating the momentum required for structural change, which cannot be achieved through unconnected individual innovators." Dr Watu Wamae, Head of Innovation at AfOx
