Bio Banking is currently responding to growing demands of the human species in fields of regenerative and transplantation medicine, which are among the most expanding fields in biomedicine. Although the future seems to promise solution to questions of matching through autologous stem cells implants, there are aspects of demand that will continue to require tissue and genetic information from other human sources. This is probably where Africa and other populations with increased effective size may be especially valuable.

Bio banking in populations of pronounced genetic variation like Africans, however, poses unique and interesting challenges as much as promise and opportunities for medical application and translation. On one side there is the challenge of implementing genomic applications now increasingly perceived as individualised in population context and vise versa; challenges also include the practicality of profiling, storage and processing of a large number of tissue samples representative of a population, and the economics of maintaining large repositories in underdeveloped countries that lacks the necessary financial resources and entrenched in outdated cultures of nation states and sovereignty that impedes sharing resources, flow of information and benefits.

On the other hand there are the immense opportunities of: matching tissues to a wide repertoire of genetic backgrounds of genomes at the root of human evolutionary tree, Identifying novel and unique expression profiles, genetic mechanisms, fitness and adaptation measures and characterising and defining the " normal biological ranges" of the human species, given evidence that humans evolved recently in east Africa for considerable period before undergoing subsequent expansion that carried part of the human group to other continents.

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Muntaser Ibrahim is a professor at the Department of Molecular Biology, Institute of Endemic Diseases, University of Khartoum. Obtained B.Sc. In Zoology and chemistry and a Ph.D in Molecular Biology, was a Wellcome Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge. Founding member, Sudanese National Academy of Sciences, and African Society of Human Genetics. Fellow of the Academy of Science for the Developing World (TWAS). His research interest is primarily on the evolutionary aspects of diseases in relation to human genetic diversity with particular interest on ethnicity, including the role of disease in ethno-geography. In 1998 established the Unit of Diseases and Diversity, which has it focus on the study of Human and parasite genetic variation. The unit contributes to the institutional efforts in research and training including training courses on Molecular Medicine, bioinforrmatics and genetic epidemiology.