In early November 2025, Thandeka Cochrane attended the African Organisation for Research and Treatment in Cancer (AORTIC)’s annual conference, held in Hammamet, Tunisia. The four-day conference was a huge event, bringing together over 1000 delegates from Africa, Europe and the USA to discuss the latest technologies, challenges and success in African cancer work. At the conference Thandeka presented a poster on ‘75 Years of Cancer Research in Sub-Saharan Africa’. Based on a paper currently being written by the team, the poster outlined the history of publications on cancer in Africa over the last century. In particular, the poster discussed why one sees peaks and troughs of publications in international journals. Here we delve into the impact of geographical pathology, the extensive cancer surveys of the 1950s and Denis Burkitt’s ‘discovery’ of Burkitt’s lymphoma on cancer work happening on the continent. We show how these three factors converged to create an intense global interest in cancer in Africa and a prolific bout of publications on the topic in top-tier internationals journals. We outline how with the end of colonialism international interest in African cancer waned, but nonetheless African researchers worked hard to keep research going and keep publications circulating in regional journals.
As the primary conference of African cancer researchers and clinicians AORTIC is an important space to understand contemporary trends and challenges in African cancer. Our close collaborators, the African Cancer Registry Network hosted their own session at the conference, where they highlighted the incredibly important role this network has played in producing cancer data for the continent.
