Empowering Africa's Future: The AI2050 AI for Drug Discovery Workshop

The AI2050 AI for Drug Discovery Workshop, held online from 15-18 September 2025, and co-hosted by the Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Foundation and Ersilia Open Source Initiative, represents a groundbreaking effort to democratise access to cutting-edge AI and machine learning technologies for drug discovery across Africa. This four-day online workshop brought together early-career scientists from across the continent, offering hands-on training to address the critical challenge of suboptimal efficacy and safety of medicines used in African populations.

The H3D Foundation, a spin-out of the H3D Drug Discovery and Development Centre at the University of Cape Town, was established in 2019 to create an absorptive capacity for securing, building and retaining skilled African scientists within innovative R&D. Led by Professor Kelly Chibale - who holds the Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery and Development - H3D operates within UCT's world-class translational medicine research environment and hosts the South African Medical Research Council Drug Discovery and Development Research Unit.

Ersilia Open Source Initiative is a technology non-profit strengthening research capacity in under-resourced settings through AI and machine learning tools. Co-founded by Dr Gemma Turon (Executive Director) and Dr Miquel Duran-Frigola (Science and Technology Director), Ersilia developed the Ersilia Model Hub - a platform making sophisticated AI models accessible to researchers with limited computational resources. The H3D-Ersilia collaboration has produced ZairaChem, an automated tool for training state-of-the-art predictive models in drug discovery.

The workshop was supported through the AI2050 Senior Fellowship programme, an initiative of Schmidt Sciences - founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt. In 2023, Professor Kelly Chibale was selected as one of seven AI2050 Senior Fellows, receiving substantial funding to pursue research addressing how AI can benefit society by 2050. This fellowship, part of Schmidt Sciences' significant commitment to supporting talented individuals working to ensure AI benefits society globally, enables the H3D-Ersilia collaboration to unlock sustainable drug discovery in Africa and address unique health challenges facing African populations.

The University of Cape Town, as institutional home of H3D and Professor Chibale's research, provides world-class research infrastructure crucial to this initiative. When workshops are held in person, local institutions serve as hosts - the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), for example, hosted the H3D-Ersilia team in delivery of an in-person version in East Africa, with Director General Professor Elijah Songok highlighting alignment with KEMRI's computational laboratory development efforts.

This four-day online workshop covered essential skills for AI-driven drug discovery: from data cleaning and chemical space visualisation, through predicting antimicrobial activity and virtual screening cascades, to exploring future directions in the field. Each session combined keynote lectures with hands-on exercises, allowing participants to immediately apply what they learn to real-world datasets and research challenges.

All course contents are released under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA licence. Participants access the Ersilia Model Hub (web-based and local installation), complete with documentation, tutorials, and AI model catalogues. Custom course applications remain available for continued learning, alongside curated scientific literature. All workshop materials are accessible through the workshop's page and Ersilia's online platform.

Full recordings of the workshop sessions are available on the H3D Foundation's YouTube channel, capturing keynote lectures, demonstrations, and discussions from each day. These recordings extend the workshop's impact to a global audience, exemplifying the partners' commitment to knowledge-sharing within the African drug discovery community. 

This workshop exists within H3D Foundation's broader capacity-strengthening ecosystem. The H3D-Ersilia partnership has produced peer-reviewed publications in Nature Communications, demonstrating that world-class research emerges when African institutions receive appropriate support. By training early-career researchers in accessible AI tools, the workshop addresses a critical gap - whilst AI proliferates globally, many experimental scientists in resource-constrained settings haven't been able to leverage its potential.

The initiative's commitment to equitable access extends beyond tool availability. Features like ZairaChem's "anonymise" function allow researchers to build models with confidential data without disclosing information - addressing real-world constraints of limited funding, less developed infrastructure, and confidentiality requirements.

Participants who completed the workshop and are applying their skills, join a growing community of African scientists equipped to harness AI for drug discovery. The AI2050 workshop exemplifies what becomes possible when visionary funding (Schmidt Sciences), institutional commitment (University of Cape Town and H3D Foundation), technological innovation (Ersilia), and local expertise converge around ensuring artificial intelligence serves all of humanity.

For African researchers addressing the continent's unique health challenges - from infectious diseases to medicines optimised for African genetic diversity - this workshop provided not just skills, but active participation in the AI revolution in drug discovery.