African Science Research Articles

Knowledge systems and the colonial legacies in African science education

This review surveys Femi Otulaja and Meshach Ogunniyi’s, Handbook of research in science education in sub-Saharan Africa, Sense, Rotterdam, 2017, noting the significance of the theoretically rich content and how this book contributes to the field of education as well as to the humanities more broadly. The volume usefully outlines the ways in which science education and scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa continue to be impacted by the region’s colonial history. Several of the chapters also enumerate proposals for teaching and learning science and strengthening academic exchange. Concerns that recur across many of the chapters include inadequate implementation of reforms; a lack of resources, such as for classroom materials and teacher training; and the continued and detrimental linguistic, financial, and ideological domination of African science education by the West. After a brief overview of the work and its central issues, this review closely examines two salient chapters that focus on scholarly communications and culturally responsive pedagogy. The scholarly communication section addresses the ways in which African science education research may in fact be too closely mirroring Western knowledge constructions without fully integrating indigenous knowledge systems in the research process. The chapter on pedagogy makes a similar argument for integrating Western and indigenous knowledge systems into teaching approaches.

Human evolution and South African science: Darwin’s hunch in context

Human evolution and South African science: Darwin’s hunch in context

Privilege and precarity: public scripts and self-censorship in shaping South African social science

South African social science’s close relationship with politics and policy have long provided a source of vitality and intellectual direction. Although one of the field’s greatest strengths, intimacy with socio-political and economic transformations engenders solipsism and stagnation. Ironically, it also compromises scholars’ political autonomy and intellectual ethics by blinding analysts to the emerging socio-political formations which will shape the country’s future. As demands for decolonisation and academic transformation continue, the pressures for political alignment will only grow. Drawing on over a decade of inquiry into the formal and informal governance of human mobility into and within South Africa, this article reveals the contours of such isolation and conceptual complacency. From this we can find direction for satisfying the “dual imperative:” contributing to progressive policy while maintaining scholarly autonomy. While not disengaging from politics, we must work to destabilise the language of it even where it means potential isolation from officials, peers, and personal profits. Doing so can protect social science’s autonomy while opening new opportunities for understanding the world in which we live and new tools for challenging those who seek to describe, theorise and change it. Doing otherwise risks converting the South African academic project into a policy think tank or self-referential echo chamber.

The Pedagogical Role of Language in Science Teaching and Learning in South Africa: A Review of Research 1990–2015

One of the objectives of the South African science curriculum is to provide equal access to science for students from all backgrounds. However, this goal remains elusive as many students, particularly those from low socio-economic backgrounds, continue to perform poorly in science. One of the reasons for the persistent differential achievement in science is language. Yet the latest review of research in science education in South Africa conducted in 2009 identified only five papers focusing on language in science in the key journals reviewed. This paper presents a review of literature on language in science, with specific focus on research on the pedagogical functions of language in South African science classrooms in the past three decades. We extended the scope of the review by looking beyond the key journals considered in the 2009 review to include any other journal publications on language in science. Analysis of the research itself suggests that earlier studies focused on ways to resolve a perceived language crisis in English as a Second Language classrooms. There is a shift in focus with more recent research exploring the mobilisation of the linguistic resources of the classroom for learner conceptual engagement. We discuss these emerging trends.

Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge through Scientific Research is Fundamental to Sustainable Development: An Anthropological Perspective

Human societies generate knowledge and strategies enabling them to survive in balanced relations with their natural and social environments. All societies thus, have their own indigenous knowledge systems originated from life’s experiences. This indigenous knowledge gives each society an identity. They are adaptive and enable them survive. They have survival value for the specific society because they were originated to serve the needs of the group and give them power to participate in decisions for their livelihood to sustain. Indeed, they are the ‘genetic material’ for development. Patman [1] writes, “There is a long tradition in Africa of reaching decision by unanimous consent – minority voices given a fair hearing….” Cheikh Anta Diop [2] emphasizes the need to build African human sciences, while Foucault [3] suggests, “There is a gap to feel by discovering the ‘Archaeology of knowledge’”. The researcher argues that, promotion of indigenous knowledge is fundamental to sustainable development, for, knowledge generated from local peoples’ life experiences agree to the law of the land and sustains their daily life. As sustainable development is community centered, it can be rational through scientific research of traditions that successfully solved local socio-economic and political conditions. Formalizing the local knowledge system into the national curriculum so as to transmit it to the new generation will also result in enhanced identity and a better standard of living.

Importance of monitoring the Greater Agulhas Current and its inter-ocean exchanges using large mooring arrays


 
 
 The 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, using CMIP5 and EMIC model outputs suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is very likely to weaken by 11–34% over the next century, with consequences for global rainfall and temperature patterns. However, these coupled, global climate models cannot resolve important oceanic features such as the Agulhas Current and its leakage around South Africa, which a number of studies have suggested may act to balance MOC weakening in the future. To properly understand oceanic changes and feedbacks on anthropogenic climate change we need to substantially improve global ocean observations, particularly within boundary current regions such as the Agulhas Current, which represent the fastest warming regions across the world’s oceans. The South African science community, in collaboration with governing bodies and international partners, has recently established one of the world’s most comprehensive observational networks of a western boundary current system, measuring the Greater Agulhas Current System and its inter-ocean exchanges south of Africa. This observational network, through its design for long-term monitoring, collaborative coordination of resources and skills sharing, represents a model for the international community. We highlight progress of the new Agulhas System Climate Array, as well as the South African Meridional Overturning Circulation programme, which includes the Crossroads and GoodHope hydrographic transects, and the South Atlantic MOC Basin-wide Array. We also highlight some of the ongoing challenges that the programmes still face.
 
 
 
 
 Significance: 
 
 
 
 Large mooring arrays have been successfully deployed to monitor the Greater Agulhas Current system.
 Capacity development is ongoing, although established, in marine science around South Africa.
 Challenges exist with regard to retention of skilled staff, resources and funding.
 
 
 

Drive behind the legends of South African science

drive behind the legends of South African science

Evaluation of gridding procedures for air temperature over Southern Africa

Abstract. Africa is considered to be highly vulnerable to climate change, yet the availability of observational data and derived products is limited. As one element of the SASSCAL initiative (Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management), a cooperation of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, South Africa and Germany, networks of automatic weather stations have been installed or improved (http://www.sasscalweathernet.org). The increased availability of meteorological observations improves the quality of gridded products for the region. Here we compare interpolation methods for monthly minimum and maximum temperatures which were calculated from hourly measurements. Due to a lack of longterm records we focused on data ranging from September 2014 to August 2016. The best interpolation results have been achieved combining multiple linear regression (elevation, a continentality index and latitude as predictors) with three dimensional inverse distance weighted interpolation.

African Science Fiction and the Planning Imagination

AbstractThis essay examines the recent rise in popularity of science fiction in Africa. I argue that this growth can be traced to key shifts within the logic of structural adjustment programs. Over the last twenty years, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have begun to place a heightened emphasis on “poverty reduction strategies” (or PRSs). These PRSs have taken the two organizations’ longstanding commitment to free-market policies and adapted them to the rhetoric of social and economic justice by suggesting that “sustainable” welfare programs can only be constructed through the “long-term” benefits of well-planned “institutions.”As I show, this vision of long-term development has encouraged a move toward fictional forms capable of speaking to elongated temporal scales. Using Nnedi Okorafor’s novelLagoonas my primary example, I investigate how sci-fi narratives have struggled to represent social agency within thelongue duréeof institutional planning.

Looking forward, looking back: animating magic, modernity and the African city-future in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon

Lagos has recently become the focus of much scholarly interest, with a strong emphasis placed on the city as crucible of global innovation. Rem Koolhaas, in his well-known formulation of Lagos has, for example, memorably theorised the city as an African megalopolis “at the forefront of globalising modernity.” Contemporary African artists have similarly begun, in recent years, to place Africa at the vanguard of planetary discourse, producing a new wave of cultural output that signals the continent as a site from which to imagine the emergence of future worlds. Salient to this growing body of work are the writings of Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, who writes in the register of “African science fiction.” This article takes Lagos as its focus by considering its futuristic representation in Okorafor’s novel Lagoon (2014). Drawing on John and Jean Comaroff’s theories of the city “as future lab to be learned from,” I suggest that it is from Okorafor’s account of Lagos, infused with a series of connections between magic and modern, city and sea, global and local, human and nonhuman, that the novel imagines the potential birthing of a new world order. Given the vital presence of nonhuman interlocutors in Okorafor’s text, this article concludes by arguing that Lagoon merits consideration within the growing field of Anthropocenic studies.

Atmospheric Conditions and Precipitation in Arid Environments: A Case of Namibia

This study evaluates the atmospheric conditions and precipitation interactions in Namibia to provide the basis for monitoring and improving conditions relating to water storage, recharge, and quality, as well as preserving small quantities of available fresh water, and improving existing water resource augmentation programs. Atmospheric conditions including temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, solar radiation, atmospheric water-holding capacity, and aerosol load, morphology, and size distribution were determined for the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Use (SASSCAL) weather/research stations situated in the Kuiseb, Cuvelai-Etosha and Okavango-Omatako Basin, in Namibia. Inferential statistical analysis of the atmospheric conditions, and historical meteorological and hydrological data yielded information on the occurrence (onset, intensity, and frequency) of precipitation in Namibia. The study also showed that the water-holding capacity of the Namibian atmosphere increased as the temperature increased; aerosol pollution close to Cuvelai and Kuiseb masked the ground and reduced moisture supply; thus, the Namibian warm climate increased risks of drought during non-rainy periods, and floods during rainy periods, but at different times and/or places. KeywordsPrecipitation; Meteorological Parameters; Aerosol Load; Aerosol Morphology; Total Suspended Particles; Atmospheric Water-holding Capacity

A “funny” feeling: laughter and nostalgia in Alex Latimer’s <i>The Space Race</i>

Alex Latimer’s The Space Race deploys the fairly conventional science fiction narrative where humans travel to the moon in search of a new home and, set in a post-apartheid context, the progressive possibilities of this search are exciting to consider. Yet, I argue, this future-oriented opportunity is – somewhat unwittingly – squandered in favour of a more nostalgic focus. Latimer uses the trope of space exploration to revisit the broken dreams of the Afrikaner volk whose goal of finding a home in South Africa has finally been thwarted by the post-apartheid era thus leading to a covert plan to colonise the moon. Latimer, wants us to laugh at the longings of the volk but the humour misfires, instead producing an uncomfortable state of disavowal that ultimately restores the nostalgic dreams of the volk by turning it into a science fiction prophesy.Keywords: Afrikaner, nostalgia, South African literature, African Science Fiction, whiteness, Alex Latimer

Sharing African Science on Social Media

Sharing science is crucial in scientists’ collaborative efforts towards advancing scientific research and towards communicating knowledge to the general public. This statement is also true across all continents and countries, regardless of economic standards for example, because science is everywhere! I learned while working in South Africa as a visiting postdoctoral scientist in air quality research that there are innovative and important scientific studies being done across the African continent that may be going unnoticed by other parts of the globe. In this commentary, I would like to highlight the Clean Air Journal’s efforts to showcase African atmospheric science to the world through social media.

Do Not Feed the Predators

This study investigates the prevalence and certain characteristics of publishing in predatory journals by South African business science academics to raise awareness and to deepen understanding of the predatory publishing phenomenon. We identified 728 recent (2013-2016) articles published by South African author/s in five popular business science journals classified as ‘predatory’, according to Beall’s list. We first report the frequency of predatory publications by South African business science academics for the study period. The data is presented in a format that also enables the analysis of the proportion of published articles in these journals by South African authors. Thereafter, we allocate the articles to the different South African universities on a fractional basis. Finally, we use the characteristics of the publications in our dataset to demonstrate that Beall was correct in classifying these five journals as low quality (predatory). Our results show that publishing in predatory journals is widespread amongst South African business science academics.If a critical mass of South African academics persists in publishing in predatory journals then the journals are legitimised, leading to other South African academics also publishing in the journals creating a downward spiral in research quality. Our sample of publications is limited to five popular predatory journals over a recent period. More research is needed to explore the generalisability of our findings to other business science journals and other fields of study (e.g., science, humanities, etc.). Our study is one of the first empirical investigations into the extent and nature of predatory publishing in a developing country and business science context. As such, we raise awareness of the dangers of incentivising research quantity above research quality that might lead to predatory publishing. We conclude our study by providing a heuristic framework to assist authors to make better decisions about journal outlets for their research.

The problem with the truth: political alliances, science, and storytelling in Nairobi

This paper reflects on the making of a collaborative, ethnographic life story on/with a leading Kenyan scientist, Davy Kiprotich Koech. A prominent and controversial international scholar in immunology and molecular medicine, Koech, born in 1951, came of age in postcolonial Kenya, an era characterized by optimism and possibilities as the nation gained independence from British rule in 1963. Internationally educated in medicine and science, he emerged as part of a new intellectual elite in postcolonial Kenya. He was a founding member of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in 1979, the national state agency responsible for medical research, and has won innumerable prizes and awards for professional and scientific achievements over the past 40 years, but a closer examination of the personal and political raises questions about the ethics of ‘global’ science, postcolonial development in East Africa, and HIV medicine in Kenya. What might his own personal story of scientific accomplishments, and controversies, tell us more generally about African science, institutional racisms, and postcolonial state making? This paper documents the methodological dilemmas in initiating a collaborative life story project with an elusive, elite scientist, including the challenge of co-narrating a life story that is entangled with political and scientific controversies.

Life Is a Biological Risk: Contagion, Contamination, and Utopia in African Science Fiction

Given the centrality of utopia to the African literary and postcolonial imaginary, science fiction by African writers offers a unique opportunity to explore and critique the sociopolitical salience of imagined African futures. Through a close reading of three short stories in theAfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers Vol I(2012) anthology, I illustrate how generic science fiction utopias prove to be much too sterile when applied to an African context and thus do not amount to a viable and sustainable future. Making use of tropes of contagion, there is a clear desire to demonstrate that the human impulse is, in many ways, contrary to the objectives of neat utopias and these stories subsequently seek to “contaminate” the notion of utopia itself. Overall, I suggest that this is indicative of a shifting postcolonial landscape that needs to more carefully weigh the price of its utopias.

Is African science true science? Reflections on the methods of African science

The general character of science and the methodology it employs are in specific terms referred to as observation and experimentation. These two methodologies reflect how science differs from other systematic modes of inquiries. This description characterises, strictly, ‘Western science’ and it is contrasted with the indigenous mode of enquiry that has come under the name, ‘African science’. In contemporary scholarship, ‘African science’ is being condemned to the level of the mysticoreligious or supernaturalist worldview. ‘African science’ is said to be purely esoteric, personal, and devoid of elements of objectivity and rigorous theorization. In this paper, I re-examine this recondite issue by further reflecting and strengthening some of the ideas put forward by some African scholars to affirm that there is a distinct method of ‘African science’ that can be termed scientific. In defending a pluralist thesis toward knowledge, scientific inclusive, this paper posits that there exist varieties of inquiry beyond what has been developed in the ‘West’ which can still be justifiably termed scientific. In addition to pluralism, it argues further that the social character of science, which makes it a part of social and cultural traditions, qualifiedly justifies ‘African science’ as a true science. I will employ the newly formulated conversational method endorsed by the Conversational School of Philosophy (CSP) in this inquiry.Keywords: African science, mystico-religious, rigorous, pluralism, Western science

An Essay on Naturalized Epistemology of African Indigenous Knowledge

The whole culture of the Black man, his religion, his cosmology, his technology, and so on possesses scientific bases. However, the epistemological bases of his science differ from those of modern Western thought. And, this difference prevents those who study Black African culture on the basis of Western epistemology to discover its scientific scope. In this article, the author develops the naturalized epistemology of the African traditional science. This epistemology teaches us that the African starts from the notion of God, to whom all reality is attributed; the Black African science is mainly a deductive science in which knowledge is of a revelatory nature. Contrary to the Western epistemology, the focus of the epistemology of the African science is the moral and spiritual conformity of the initiate to the religious norms and the praxis of the knowledge he produces. Far from being a bunch of superstitious beliefs, the African traditional religion, which is the basis of African lore, is demonstrated today, thanks to the apologetic tools developed by the Institut des Sciences Animiques, to be a scientific knowledge whose cosmology leads to the holistic “theory of everything.” This proves the natural convergence between African traditional lore and Newtonian physics.

Improving the climate data management in the meteorological service of Angola: experience from SASSCAL

Abstract. The knowledge on climate variability in parts of Southern Africa is limited because of the low availability of historic and present-day ground-based observations (Niang et al., 2014). However, there is an increased need of climate information for research, climate adaptation measures and climate services. To respond to the challenges of climate change and related issues, Angola, Botswana, Germany, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia have initiated the interdisciplinary regional competence centre SASSCAL, the "Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management". As part of the initiative, Germany's national meteorological service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) cooperates with the meteorological services of Angola, Botswana and Zambia in order to improve the management and availability of historical and present-day climate data in these countries. The first results of the cooperation between the German and the Angolan Meteorological Services are presented here. International assessments have shown that improvements of the data management concepts are needed in several countries. The experience of this cooperation can therefore provide hints for comparable activities in other regions.

The Spectrum of Pedagogical Orientations of Malawian and South African Physical Science Teachers towards Inquiry

This study investigated and compared the pedagogical orientations of physical sciences teachers in Malawi and South Africa towards inquiry or direct methods of science teaching. Pedagogical orientation has been theorized as a component of pedagogical content knowledge. Orientations were characterized along a spectrum of two variants of inquiry and two variants of direct instruction. Teacher preferences for pedagogy were measured using case-based assessment items which depicted actual scenarios for teaching particular physical sciences topics and provided four alternative teaching method options. Item topics were common to both the Malawian and South African science syllabuses. Response data were obtained from 164 Malawian high school physical sciences teachers at community, conventional and grant-aided schools, for comparison with previous South African data. Analyses produced pedagogical orientation profiles for each teacher and item in terms of the distribution of choices between the four options and these were aggregated by school type and compared with the corresponding profiles for South African teachers on the same items. Responses to items covered the whole spectrum of approaches, although relative proportions depended on teacher, topic, type of school and country. Aggregated responses for both countries tended more toward variants of inquiry than of direct instruction. In some cases, Malawian teachers had an unexpectedly strong direct didactic preference. A direct didactic orientation was mainly prevalent amongst teachers from disadvantaged Malawian community schools and South African rural schools. South African teachers from suburban schools exhibited a stronger guided inquiry orientation than their Malawian counterparts from grant-aided schools. In contrast, teachers at Malawian conventional schools had a stronger preference to adopt variants of inquiry (guided and open) than South African teachers at corresponding township schools. Teachers at more privileged schools, that is, Malawian grant-aided and South African suburban schools, showed stronger guided- and open-inquiry orientations than teachers at less privileged schools. School type and contextual circumstances affected teachers’ pedagogy choices in both countries, having a substantial influence on the approaches that teachers would adopt in their own situations.