Nigeria National Genomics Surveillance Strategy (NGSS)

The NGSS is the product of a collaborative process that began in May 2024 with a stakeholder engagement workshop, followed by strategy development and validation workshops held over subsequent months. These efforts brought together over 100 contributors from government ministries, academic institutions, private sector players, and international organizations. The result was a comprehensive roadmap designed to tackle Nigeria’s complex health challenges through cutting-edge genomic sequencing and data-driven decision-making.

The strategy has three technical [1-3] and three cross-cutting [4-6] pillars:

1. National Genomics Research Priority Programmes – a national multiomics biobank and genome project, locally relevant diagnostics, drugs and vaccines, tracking disease burden and drug resistance, and a data and bioinformatics hub.
2. Prevention, Early Detection and Surveillance – One Health genomic surveillance for communicable and non-communicable diseases, sample referral networks and zonal biobanks.
3. Diagnosis and Precision Medicine – bringing validated genomic tools into routine care, pathogen sequencing for diagnosis, and omics for non-communicable and rare diseases.
4. Patient/Stakeholder Engagement and Workforce Development – public trust, a skilled workforce, omics-driven industry, and governance.
5. Resource and Stakeholder Mapping, Gaps, Prioritization and Strategic Planning – mapping capacity, gap analysis, a national priority list, and funding and M&E plans.
6. PLEASE Framework and Data Value Chain – political, legal, ethical, anthropological, social and economic governance, plus data systems, data protection and AI