Nicki Tiffin is a molecular geneticist, computational biologist, epidemiologist, and health data wizard. But above all, she is a problem fixer.

"I've banned the words 'should' and 'ought' from my lexicon. I'm not interested in thinking about what we ought to be doing. I'm interested in building a tool that makes the solution happen," said Nicki, a professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

The tool she is currently developing addresses one of the oldest inequities that disadvantages African researchers: Data sharing with researchers outside the continent.

For decades, it's been best practice for researchers to upload their data and samples to a public repository for all to use. The problem: African researchers are usually the ones who spend years collecting the samples, and once they make the data public, researchers in high-income countries have the resources to comb through the data and publish papers faster, even though they lack a full appreciation of the local context. This hurts the quality of the analyses and the career prospects of African researchers.

"Africans have less advocacy to push back because of the inequitable funding setup. The data sharing tool I am developing is an attempt to shift that dynamic and get a better outcome for Africans in general," said Nicki.

Nicki is building the African Data and Biospecimen Exchange, an online platform that will give African researchers a voice in how research is done and how they will be involved.

The platform is akin to a free advertising arena where researchers can post information about their datasets and biospecimen collections available to share, without having to share them outright or send them to a centralized repository. Interested parties can initiate a negotiation on how they would be used. For instance, in exchange for the data or biospecimens, African researchers might choose to request the other party share bylines on published papers, include them in the team doing the analysis, or furnish new equipment for the health clinic that collected the samples.

More equitable data sharing can lead to a virtuous cycle of benefits. African populations will benefit from better informed research using their data and biospecimens, and increased collaboration and improved career development could curb the brain drain of African researchers moving overseas.

Disturbing the status quo will likely upset those who are comfortable with it. But Nicki is perfectly comfortable with the uncomfortable.

"I believe in being civil and pleasant. I'm friends with everyone, but I'm absolutely not scared of standing my ground," she said.