Ace Alzheimer Barcelona promotes a project to anticipate aging in Africa

The collaboration with Brain Health Africa aims to strengthen research into Alzheimer’s and other dementias in African populations, which are still underrepresented in international studies, and to adapt diagnosis to the continent’s cultural and linguistic diversity.

• Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona will collaborate with Brain Health Africa to promote more diverse, inclusive, and representative dementia research.
• The alliance, presented for the first time at the Barcelona Pittsburgh Conference, will focus on scientific training, diagnosis adapted to local contexts, and capacity building in Africa.
• The project seeks to anticipate the rise in dementia cases in Africa amid the progressive aging of its population.

Research on Alzheimer’s and other dementias has made remarkable progress in recent decades, but it has not advanced at the same pace across all world regions, nor with equal representation of all populations. People living on the African continent remain underrepresented in major international studies on neurodegenerative diseases, despite Africa’s vast genetic, cultural, and linguistic diversity.

Aiming to help bridge this gap, Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona has announced a new collaboration with Brain Health Africa, an African initiative focused on driving research, diagnosis, awareness, and brain health concerning dementia across the continent.

The collaboration was first unveiled during the Barcelona Pittsburgh Conference (BCNPIT), held in Barcelona last May. The gathering, focused on advances in Alzheimer’s, dementias, and other neurodegenerative diseases, served as the framework to introduce an alliance aimed at fostering more diverse and inclusive research connected to realities that are still underrepresented in global science.

An alliance for a more diverse science

The collaboration will allow both entities to explore new avenues of scientific cooperation, particularly in researcher training, cultural adaptation of diagnostic tools, development of follow-up cohorts, and knowledge sharing in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

“After more than three decades working in the diagnosis, care, and research of dementias, at Ace we know that knowledge only advances if it is shared. This collaboration with Brain Health Africa allows us to contribute our experience in care models, clinical data, and early detection, but also to learn from a different scientific, cultural, and social reality—one that is essential to building truly global and inclusive research,” says Dr. Mercè Boada, co-founder and medical director of Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona.

Anticipating a public health challenge

Although Africa is currently the continent with the youngest population in the world, its progressive aging means that dementias will place an increasing strain on its healthcare systems over the coming decades.

Brain Health Africa works to build a scientific infrastructure that makes it possible to study dementia through the African reality and under African leadership, avoiding models where data is collected on the continent but analyzed and interpreted from other contexts.

One of Brain Health Africa’s flagship programs is iBOND, which aims to train African scientists in biostatistics, bioinformatics, genomics, and neurodegenerative diseases. In one of its recent calls for applications, it received over 400 applications from 28 countries, although its current capacity allows it to train around 40 researchers per year.

Another line of work involves building longitudinal cohorts and biobanks to collect clinical, sociodemographic, and biological data. In Cameroon, the project plans to screen 3,600 people over the age of 50 to establish a foundational baseline cohort.

Diagnosis adapted to cultural diversity

One of the main challenges is adapting diagnostic tools to highly diverse contexts. In Cameroon, more than 250 languages are spoken, and urban, rural, and indigenous populations coexist with vastly different cultural and educational backgrounds.

This makes it necessary to validate cognitive tests in local languages and to design methods that do not rely exclusively on formal schooling.

“Studying dementia in Africa is not just about transferring existing research models, but about building valid tools for its populations, languages, and social contexts,” representatives from Ace emphasize.

Raising awareness against stigma

The social dimension of the project is another key pillar. In some African communities, symptoms of cognitive decline can be interpreted as non-medical phenomena, hindering diagnosis and increasing the stigma surrounding affected individuals.

For this reason, Brain Health Africa combines biomedical research with community awareness programs, healthcare professional training, and dialogue with health authorities.

Through this collaboration, Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona and Brain Health Africa aim to drive more global, equitable dementia research adapted to local realities, while simultaneously building scientific and clinical capacity across the African continent.