Wits PhD candidate Bontle Masango takes her research to the Broad Institute, aiming to tackle type 2 diabetes across Africa.
Johannesburg, South Africa (23 February 2026) – Bontle Masango is bringing her expertise in genomics to the United States as a 2025/2026 Fulbright Scholar at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Over the next five months, she will work alongside leading biomedical researchers to tackle type 2 diabetes, the most common form of diabetes in Africa, aiming to detect it earlier and reduce its serious health impacts.
Bontle is a PhD candidate at Wits University’s School of Clinical Medicine. Now studying how small differences in DNA and lifestyle influence the body’s response to sugar. Her work builds on her master’s research, which examined how blood sugar levels fluctuate in South African adults after eating, and how these changes relate to hormones and liver function.
Her goal is to find early warning signs of type 2 diabetes before serious complications set in.
“The purpose of my research is to find better ways to predict who is likely to develop type 2 diabetes before serious damage happens. Many people only find out they have type 2 diabetes when it has already started causing complications.”
She points out that while type 2 diabetes is widespread across Africa, it’s often overlooked.
“Because it is so common, we think of it as ‘normal’, but what many people do not realise is that diabetes increases your risk of having serious health complications like heart problems, kidney disease, eye conditions causing blindness, and foot issues that might lead to amputations.”
At the Broad Institute, she will undertake advanced training and collaborate with experts in genomics and biomedical science, contributing to research that could benefit African populations and improve precision medicine for underrepresented communities. The institute’s cross-disciplinary model allows teams to tackle complex scientific questions that single laboratories cannot address, providing Bontle with an ideal environment to develop solutions that could one day reduce the burden of type 2 diabetes across the continent.
Through this programme, Bontle is advancing science but also shining a spotlight on African health challenges.
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