Christian Happi

Christian Happi was born in Cameroon in 1965 and trained as a molecular biologist, eventually earning a doctorate in France before turning his attention to the infectious diseases that killed people across West Africa with little scientific scrutiny. He settled in Nigeria, where he built the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer's University, one of the few labs on the continent capable of full genetic sequencing of dangerous pathogens.

His team used the lab to track Lassa fever, a viral disease endemic to West Africa that had long been under-studied, mapping how it spread and mutated between outbreaks. During the 2014 to 2016 Ebola epidemic, his group sequenced samples from Nigeria's outbreak within days, information that helped public health teams trace the chain of infection and contain it faster than in neighbouring countries.

In February 2020, as the new coronavirus began spreading globally, Happi's laboratory sequenced the genome of the first confirmed case in sub-Saharan Africa within about 48 hours, one of the fastest turnarounds anywhere in the world at that stage of the pandemic, and shared the data openly with international researchers.

He has continued pushing for African-led infrastructure to detect and respond to outbreaks, arguing that relying on laboratories overseas costs lives during the exact weeks when speed matters most.