Since September 2025, Prisca Asiimwe Kweyamba has been working as a researcher at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg (EMBL) in Germany as part of the EMBL-UNESCO Residency in Infection Biology Research. This programme for PhD graduates promotes equality, diversity and inclusiveness in science, notably by fostering the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science adopted in November 2021, the UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers adopted in November 2017 and the EMBL’s Molecules to Ecosystems programme, which runs from 2022 to 2026.
Growing up in Tanzania, Prisca witnessed malaria as a daily reality with children missing school and families spending their limited savings on treatment. Witnessing how a preventable disease could disrupt entire communities planted the first seed of curiosity and responsibility.
’What continues to keep me engaged is the sense that every laboratory finding, every field experiment, brings hope that fewer families will live under that burden.’
Eradicating malaria in Tanzania by researching novel insecticides
Over the past two decades, Tanzania has achieved substantial progress in reducing malaria incidence; However, the disease continues to pose a major public health burden. Eradication remains challenging due to the complex interplay of biological, environmental, and socio-economic factors that sustain transmission. A particularly pressing issue is the emergence of mosquito populations resistant to conventional insecticides, which undermine vector control efforts and continue transmission.
‘’My research directly addresses this challenge by investigating the effects of novel insecticides, such as chlorfenapyr, on both mosquito survival and development of the malaria parasite within the vector’’ adds Prisca.
Unlike traditional neurotoxic insecticides, chlorfenapyr operates through a distinct biochemical mechanism that disrupts mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, impairing mosquito metabolisms. This unique mode of action offers dual potential: overcoming existing insecticide resistance and at the same time reducing the mosquito’s capacity to transmit malaria parasites.
EMBL-UNESCO Residency empowers international scientific collaboration
The EMBL-UNESCO Residency fosters international scientific collaboration between scientists in Africa and Europe, allowing them to connect practical challenges faced in countries, such as Tanzania with advanced research tools available at places like EMBL, including CRISPR-Cas gene editing and single-cell transcriptomics. Such technologies make it possible to explore questions in vector biology that were once impossible to answer, bringing scientists closer to turning scientific data into real solutions for controlling malaria.
‘’Mosquitoes collected in rural Tanzania can be analyzed using powerful sequencing machines in Heidelberg, and the results can then guide better mosquito control strategies back home’’ explains Prisca.
By allowing scientists to share tools, ideas, and skills, the UNESCO-EMBL partnership helps build stronger research capacity in Tanzania, so local scientists become leaders in the fight against malaria in the long term.
This fellowship offers a transformative opportunity to gain hands-on experience in functional genomics and new technologies. Beyond training, I aim to transfer these to my home institution, supporting capacity building and fostering a new generation of molecular entomologists in Tanzania.
