African Science Research Articles

African science contributes to the fight against cancer in the world: reflections after the 10th AORTIC conference, 18-22nd November 2015, Marrakesh, Morocco.

AORTIC (OAREC), the Pan – African organization aiming to unite African scientists in the fight against cancer on the continent, held its 2015 conference in November, in Marrakesh. It was an opportunity to evaluate the progress made, to strengthen scientific collaborations and to draw the future battle lines against cancer on the continent.

From magic to African experimental science: Toward a new paradigm

This paper assumes that there is a distinction between empirical and non-empirical science. It also assumes that empirical science has two complementary parts, namely, theorization and experimentation. The paper focuses strictly on the experimental aspect of science. It is a call for reformation in African experimental science. Following a deep historical understanding of the revolution that brought about experimental philosophy (as modern empirical science was called up to the time of Newton) this paper admits that magic was the mother, not just the “bastard sister” of empirical science. It uncovers the fact that magic added the dimension of experimentation to science. This paper somewhat maintains that most of the ideas presented by some African scholars contain vestiges of the magical tradition in them. Even though this might not be a flaw by any reasonable standard, the paper still argues that there is a genuine need to separate magic from science, if we ever crave for any form of material/physical progress in Africa. I insist that the thrust of the call for paradigm shift in this paper is centered basically on experimentation. The issue of theoretical entities was introduced only to the extent such entities enhance experimental realism in the practice of African science. Of course, reformation can equally take place at the level of scientific theorization, but that is strictly beyond the scope of this paper. The fact is that those who are versed on the issues of experimentation should begin to get more focused on that aspect; and those who are given to theorization should settle with the formulation of well-structured theories. Time has indeed come for us to properly streamline our thoughts and make progress in the direction of African experimental science. In making this clarion call, we adopted a combined approach of hermeneutics and analysis.Keywords: Magic, African science, experimental science, paradigm, African thought

Valuing IKS in successive South African Physical Sciences Curricula

The valuing of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) is one of the principles on which the South African school curriculum is supposed to be based. The purpose of this paper is to critique the treatment of indigenous knowledge in the South African secondary Physical Sciences curriculum against a backdrop of international debates on the relationship between IKS and science. Such debates usually take either an Inclusive perspective, where IKS are regarded as part of science, or an Exclusive perspective, where IKS and science are regarded as separate domains of knowledge. We identify a third perspective where IKS and science are viewed as intersecting domains. A document analysis of all national post-apartheid curriculum documents relevant to secondary Physical Sciences identifies only nine examples of IKS related to Physical Sciences in the latest curriculum documents (CAPS), although this is an improvement on the previous curricula. The curriculum documents reflect some confusion about the relationship between IKS and science, both in the wording and in the positioning of examples in relation to science content. Physical sciences curriculum development in South Africa appears to have gone through the stages of colonisation, decolonisation and neo-colonisation. We recommend the development of theory that addresses the role of valuing IKS in science classrooms. The Intersecting perspective offers promise as an approach to use in science classrooms, allowing the distinction to be made between pieces of indigenous knowledge that intersect with modern science knowledge and IKS as whole systems of thinking with distinctive worldviews.

Science, Technology and Sustainable Food Production in Africa: An Assessment

This paper examines the impact of science and technology on sustainable food security in Africa, particularly on the contribution of Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and Biosafety. The researchers adopted a descriptive survey of wide range of literature drawn from the experience of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, Tanzania and Nigeria. The centrality of the role of science and technology in sustainable food security in these countries is highlighted. Challenges of achieving sustainable food security is also identified. The study concludes that to achieve sustainable food security Africa must lay a solid foundation for African science and technology by investing more on education, research and development (R&D) as well as initiate public policies aimed at sharing adaptive and practical innovations and breakthroughs in science, technology and sustainability of food in the African continent among African States. Furthermore, African countries as a matter of urgency should invest on agricultural development with a view to achieving sustainable food production. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s4p285

AESA – African Science Research Fund Launched

AESA – African Science Research Fund Launched

The Development and Use of an Instrument to Investigate Science Teachers’ Views on Indigenous Knowledge

Science teachers in South Africa and globally experience difficulties with the integration of indigenous knowledge into their science lessons—a requirement of many science curricula. One of the reasons for this may relate to the views teachers hold about indigenous knowledge. Such views can form a barrier against successful inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the science classroom. It was, therefore, deemed useful to investigate teachers’ views on indigenous knowledge. This article reports on the development of a theoretical framework, and a questionnaire derived from it, to investigate teachers’ views on indigenous knowledge. The researchers were informed by the framework developed by Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell and Schwartz regarding the nature of science (NOS) and their views-on-the-NOS questionnaire. A qualitative study was done to develop and validate the views-on-the-nature-of-indigenous-knowledge instrument (VNOIK). The findings indicate that the VNOIK instrument is suitable to determine a wide range of views of science teachers on the nature of indigenous knowledge. We found that South African science teachers held mainly a partially informed view on the nature of indigenous knowledge. The new instrument can be used to measure the effect of a short learning programme and to identify further development needs of science teachers in addressing the tenets of science and indigenous knowledge effectively in the classroom.

The SASSCAL contribution to climate observation, climate data management and data rescue in Southern Africa

Abstract. A major task of the newly established "Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management" (SASSCAL; www.sasscal.org) and its partners is to provide science-based environmental information and knowledge which includes the provision of consistent and reliable climate data for Southern Africa. Hence, SASSCAL, in close cooperation with the national weather authorities of Angola, Botswana, Germany and Zambia as well as partner institutions in Namibia and South Africa, supports the extension of the regional meteorological observation network and the improvement of the climate archives at national level. With the ongoing rehabilitation of existing weather stations and the new installation of fully automated weather stations (AWS), altogether 105 AWS currently provide a set of climate variables at 15, 30 and 60 min intervals respectively. These records are made available through the SASSCAL WeatherNet, an online platform providing near-real time data as well as various statistics and graphics, all in open access. This effort is complemented by the harmonization and improvement of climate data management concepts at the national weather authorities, capacity building activities and an extension of the data bases with historical climate data which are still available from different sources. These activities are performed through cooperation between regional and German institutions and will provide important information for climate service related activities.

Working through resistance in engaging boys and men towards gender equality and progressive masculinities

Over the last two decades, a focus on challenging and transforming dominant forms of masculinity and engaging boys and men towards gender equality and healthy masculinities has permeated South African social and health sciences and the humanities. This focus on men and boys has also been evident in intervention and activist work. However, the turn to boys, men and masculinities has not gone without resistance, contestation and contradictions. A range of localised and global realities has frustrated much of the enthusiasm for rapid, sweeping and concrete changes regarding gender justice and the making of progressive masculinities. Among the discursive and material forces that oppose work that engages boys and men are those to do with income-related issues, race and racism, cultural traditions and gender itself. Because of this, it is contended that engagement with boys and men needs to consider not only gender but also economic inequality, poverty and unemployment, divisions created by race, and struggles around tradition. This paper discusses these forces that undermine and counteract work with boys and men and how we might work through resistance in engaging with men and boys.

Integrated water management tools supporting future water security and food production in West Africa

HEOU MALEKI BADJANA1,2,3, JORG HELMSCHROT4,5, WOLFGANG-ALBERT FLUGEL 2, KPERKOUMA WALA3, ABEL AFOUDA1 & KOFFI AKPAGANA3 1 West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use, Graduate Research Program of Climate Change and Water Resources, University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, Benin maleki.badj@yahoo.fr 2 Department of Geoinformatics, Hydrology and Modelling, Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany 3 Laboratory of Botany and Plant Ecology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lome, Togo 4 Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology of Plants (BEE), University of Hamburg, Germany 5 Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL)

Integrated SASSCAL research to assess and secure current and future water resources in Southern Africa

Climate change will affect current water resources and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. Considering ongoing changes in land management and population growth as well as projected climate scenarios, the overall challenge in the southern African region is to secure water at sufficient quality and quantity for both the stability of ecosystems, with their functions, and services and for human well-being (potable water, irrigation water, and water for industrial use). Thus, improved understanding of the linkages between hydrological (including hydrogeological) components of ecosystems and society is needed as a precondition to develop sustainable management strategies for integrated water resources management in this data scarce region. With initial funding through the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of Germany, 88 research projects of the SASSCAL Initiative (Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management; www.sasscal.org) focus on providing information and services allowing for a better understanding and assessment of the impact of climate and land management changes in five thematic areas: climate, water, agriculture, forestry and biodiversity.

An Analysis of Teachers’ Concept Confusion Concerning Electric and Magnetic Fields

In an exploratory study, 36 South African physical science teachers’ understanding of basic concepts concerning electric and magnetic fields was studied from a perspective of possible concept confusion. Concept confusion is said to occur when features of one concept are incorrectly attributed to a different concept, in the case of this study to magnetic and electric fields. An example of concept confusion is the perception that a magnetic north pole has an excess of positive charges and consequently attracts negative charges placed in the field. The researchers constructed a framework of 20 interrelated critical aspects of which the scientific topic is composed conceptually. Next, the understanding of concepts and interactions in electric and magnetic fields by 36 teachers of physical science (a subject combining physics and chemistry for grades 10–12), who were enrolled for an in-service subject knowledge upgrading course, was probed through questionnaires and interviews. This approach allowed us to answer the central research question of this study: what alternative understandings do teachers have of the topic of electric and magnetic fields in terms of potential concept confusion? The teachers’ understanding does appear to be interpretable in terms of whether or not they distinguish between the critical aspects identified in this study. The results show six categories of aspects of electric and magnetic fields causing teachers’ inability to distinguish between the two fields, with a consequent confusion of concepts. These categories are: sources of currents; sources of electric fields; sources of magnetic fields; the effects of electric and magnetic fields on materials; electric and magnetic forces; and the direction of the electric and magnetic forces. Results from this research study may contribute to the enhancement of physical science teacher training and consequently school teaching.

Pedagogical translanguaging: bridging discourses in South African science classrooms

This paper reports on the classroom languaging practices of a group of science teachers in rural and township schools in South Africa where the majority of learners learn through the medium of English, despite the fact that it is the home language of only a small minority; and learners’ poor English proficiency frequently restricts their access to the curriculum. The purpose of the study was to explore how these science teachers utilised the linguistic resources of the classroom – the learners’ home language and English – and if their practices might improve learners’ opportunity to learn science. A series of lessons for each teacher was videotaped and the teachers were interviewed on their language attitudes and practices.The focus is on one teacher, who demonstrated a skilled ‘bridging discourse’ across modes, discourses and languages to provide learners with what appeared to be improved opportunities to learn science. What distinguished this teacher's practice from that of the other teachers was his systematic and purposeful use of the learners’ home language in what has been termed ‘pedagogical translanguaging’ – as opposed to the relatively brief and reactive code-switching or complete avoidance of the learners’ home language evident in the other classrooms.

A Towering Critique of the Ambience of Social Welfare, Social Work and the Social Development Paradigm—An African Analysis

What should be the African social worker in the modern world. The African social worker has discovered that most clinical and other modern social work practices are Euro-centric. And only reflect only European values. He knows that African communal social work practices existed in an ethnocentric environment that encourages an African-centred world view. How this African centred world view wouyld help him to define a new social work values with a paradigmatic shift to his roles as a profession is a challenge to both social philosophy and its social work concentrates. Therefore this article raises serious concerns about the ethnocentric nature of existing paradigms within the social sciences that form the basis for social work theory and practice with implications for modern social work in Africa. In addition, it highlights the theoretical deficits within existing social work models that do not reflect the worldviews of diverse cultural communities in modern world. Can existing social work models continue to express ethnocentric value systems as the universal way to explain human behaviour in the light of growing demands for pluralism not only between groups but also between epistemologies and worldviews? The authors of the article, writing from the perspective of the new African social science, argues for an alternative paradigm that is grounded in the cultural and historical reality of the African communal experience.

21st Century South African Science Fiction

Abstract The paper analyses some aspects of South African science fiction, starting with its beginnings in the 1920s and focusing on some 21st century writings. Thus Lauren Beukes’ novels Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010) are taken into consideration in order to present new trends in South African literature and the way science fiction has been marked by Apartheid. The second South African science fiction writer whose writings are examined is Henrietta Rose-Innes (with her novel Nineveh, published in 2011) as this consolidates women's presence in the SF world.

The impact of African science: a bibliometric analysis

The number of scientific papers published by researchers in Africa has been rising faster than the total world scientific output in recent years. This trend is relevant, as for a long period up until 1996, Africa's share of the world scientific output remained below 1.5 %. The propensity to publish in the continent has risen particularly fast since 2004, suggesting that a possible take-off of African science is taking place. This paper highlights that, in parallel with this most recent growth in output, the apparent productivity of African science, as measured by publications to gross domestic product, has risen in recent years to a level above the world average, although, when one looks at the equivalent ratio after it has been normalized by population, there is still a huge gap to overcome. Further it is shown that publications from those few African countries whose scientific communities demonstrate higher levels of specialization and integration in international networks, have a higher impact than the world average. Additionally, the paper discusses the potential applications of the new knowledge that has been produced by African researchers, highlighting that so far, South Africa seems to be the only African country where a reasonable part of that new knowledge seems to be connecting with innovation.

African Science Leaders Focus on Key Challenges and Opportunities

While dozens of African presidents were in Washington, D. C., in early August to meet with U.S. president Barack Obama during the first U.S.‐Africa Leaders Summit, African science ministers and science academy officials held their own gathering at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to focus on challenges and opportunities related to environmental protection, climate change, development, health, poverty, technology, and other issues.

Perception of Relationship between Art and Science in Contemporary African Arts and Technology

The contemporary African art and science is a product of human works of conception and perception worthy aesthetic values. Anthropologically and archaeologically speaking art and science was the first physical weapon of survival through the production of shape tools that allowed man an effective control over survival in his untamed environment, through which art and science researchers concluded that art is science and science is art it is logical, systematic and rational. The two implies a systematic principles and methods employing in performing a set of activities as a result many and varied are the usage of art and science and together they reveal the basic urges and aspiration of Africans which is evolutionary and revolutionary, scientifically and artistically. Art and science in the contemporary African undergoes a process of industrial art and industrial science. It is however pertinent to state this point that the various stand-points from which science and art have been viewed by professionals and researchers, are the similarity and relationship between the two. The paper discussed the perception of art and science. The conceptualization and the classification of the two, the perception of arts and science in the contemporary Africa, are therefore analyzed in the paper and this will bring into closer contact arts and science and popularizing the benefits of interaction, as being of concern to the artist and the scientific community in recent years. The paper drawn a conclusion that art and science are of the same culture.

Dealing with diversity: African youth research and the potential of comparative approaches

While African youth now feature among the most-researched phenomena in African Studies and Africa-focused social sciences, scholarship continues to shy away from the field's most daunting challenge. As the oversized analytical category ‘youth’ cannot tame the diversity and the ambiguity of the phenomenon ‘youth’, it remains difficult to develop tangible theories and reduce the fuzziness that characterises the current debate. In this paper, I review the most recent advances in the field of African youth studies and outline three comparative approaches to respond to the methodological challenges of diversity and ambiguity. Demonstrating how these comparative approaches can be used for youth-specific inquiries on different levels, I argue that comparison is effective in urging researchers to connect theory, methodology and empirical data more explicitly, to pay particular attention to the respective contexts that mark young people's attitudes and behaviour, and to address diversity as a puzzle rather than a ready-made answer.

Ironies of Laboratory Work during Ghana's Second Age of Optimism

While Ghana is touted as an African success story, the young employees of a large herbal medicine research center in Ghana make sardonic and cynical remarks about the state of science in contemporary Africa. They decry the improvisation that characterizes doing science on the continent, point out what is lacking from their laboratories, and mock the ways in which their work appears embarrassingly peculiar. They claim that their labs are “not modern” and ironically refer to dissatisfying aspects of their work as “African science,” a second-rate version of science done elsewhere. This is what Achille Mbembe has called negative interpretation, where social life is understood primarily in the ways in which it differs from an assumed Western standard. These jokes reference an earlier period in Ghanaian history, when African science formed part of the project of postcolonial nation building. Scientists of the independence period constructed the scientific and medical infrastructure of Ghana to both provide for the needs of its people and to represent the status of modern Africa to the world. The apparently incongruous relationship between the cynicism of these jokes and the strain of Afro-optimism that has recently surrounded Ghana indicates a sustained shift in the identity politics of African professionals since independence. Their jokes signal their attempts at disentangling their identities from the project of African modernity, and at positioning themselves as scientists working in the context of Ghana.

Advances in African and Arab science journalism: Capacity building and new newsroom structures through digital peer-to-peer support

Journalists who regularly cover science, health, environment and technology in Africa and the Arab world face a number of difficulties: Lack of elementary resources for journalistic research, and newsroom environments that are not always supportive of specialised reporting. Also a need for capacity to cover science is often bemoaned as well as difficulties in interactions between journalists and scientists. The evaluation of the world's largest support initiative for science journalism in developing countries, the SjCOOP mentoring programme, shows that some of these problems can be mitigated through a variety of support programmes, especially ‘distance mentoring’. The article analyses ways of building capacity and offering general support with the help of ICTs. Organisational structures for specialised reporting in 40 newsrooms are compared. Cases of structural advancement and innovation for science journalism are discussed.