In 2015, 27-year old Kenyan Shabaya Beche and his friends were wondering how to dispose of some old electronic equipment. Between them, they had old computers, video games, cell phones, even a refrigerator. “None of us had a better idea, then, besides throwing them into the bin,” says Beche, who at the time was a […]
We learn to read by connecting letters and words with sounds and ideas we already know—so why do we teach African children using texts about marshmallows and ponies, asks Connie Nshemereirwe? In the village surrounding the university where I used to work in rural Uganda, I regularly met neatly dressed boys and girls walking home […]
Youth unemployment is one of Africa’s biggest challenges, but compulsory entrepreneurship training can turn the continent’s job-seekers into job creators, writes Abiodun Egbetokun. Africa faces a huge unemployment burden, particularly among its youth. The African Development Bank estimates that almost one-third of the continent’s 420 million inhabitants aged 15 to 35 years are jobless and […]
Gari—made of dried cassava flakes—is a common food staple in Ghana. Mixed with water, salt, sugar or condensed milk, it can be eaten with soups, or on its own. But go into a big Ghanaian supermarket, and you’re unlikely to find gari on the shelves. That is a big problem for Sandra Ameworla, who runs […]
It is after sunset in Chimanimani, a district in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands, and Olinda Tuso is steering her buck Boer goat towards a corrugated iron structure that looks like a carport. The daily ritual puts him out of harm’s way. Hungry jackals come down from the nearby mountains looking for food at night. “If you […]
African cities may seem chaotic compared to metropoles in other parts of the world. But they have an inner resilience that can serve them when disaster hits. As the death toll from the new coronavirus that causes the deadly respiratory illness COVID-19 continues to rise, Scientific African Magazine spoke to Zaheer Allam, a Mauritius-based expert […]
Village elders in Africa played a crucial role in a global seed-collecting project that aims to bolster food security in a changing climate. Through cross-breeding common crops with their wild relatives, scientists plan to create strains that are better able to cope with higher temperatures and extreme weather. The Crop Wild Relatives project, funded by […]
Locally manufactured antiretroviral drugs could make devastating stock-outs a thing of the past. But pilot production projects are struggling to scale up, reports Christabel Ligami. Agnes Mumbi knows all about the devastating effects that antiretroviral (ARV) stock-outs can wreak on families. The 32-year-old Kenyan mother of two has been taking the drugs since testing positive […]
Small African countries are often overlooked by big international research funders, but pooling resources could give them a leg-up, writes Simiso Mkhonta. It takes a village to raise a child. This was so real during my childhood years at Makhewu village near Siteki town in eastern Eswatini. Parenthood was a collective responsibility for all the […]
A deadly Listeria outbreak in South Africa highlighted the power that consumers wield in improving food safety. Now scientists hope to harness that power in other parts of Africa. In mid-June 2017 at a medical lab in Pretoria, South Africa, five patient samples tested positive for the deadly foodborne bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. That was unusual: […]