Africa’s first indigenous astronomy PhD wants to revive ‘negated’ knowledge

Growing up, Motheo Koitsiwe used to listen to his grandmother tell stories about the night sky. She spoke of selemela (the Pleiades), molalatladi (the Milky Way), mphatlalatsane (Venus), and ngwedi (the Moon). These stories were not just meant to entertain. For the ancestors of the Batswana people who live in Botswana and South Africa today, […]

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Barriers from bush to bedside

Over 5,000 plants are used for medicinal purposes in Africa, but efforts to test their potency and commercialise them keep hitting snags. Scientists hope better research standards will improve outcomes, Sandrine Ceurstemont reports. A bitter-tasting plant with silvery leaves is used in many southern African countries to treat a variety of medical conditions, from cancer […]

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How Kenya’s devolution hobbled healthcare

Earlier this year, two girls died of dog-transmitted rabies in western Kenya. The deaths incensed veterinarians who had been struggling to obtain rabies vaccines from the local government for years. By all accounts, the veterinarians should have been able to source the vaccines. In 2014, Kenya’s national government had embarked on a drive to eliminate rabies […]

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Mon chemin vers l’indépendance

Comme tout bon projet, ma thèse de doctorat a été parsemée de beaucoup de difficultés. Même si à chaque fois j’ai trouvé le courage de continuer, j’avais, à un moment, pris la décision de ne pas m’engager dans une carrière de chercheur à temps plein, préférant l’enseignement. De plus, un de mes superviseurs m’avait fortement […]

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Kenya’s butterfly queen

Esther Kioko has gone from village girl to top insect scientist. Here she tells Geoffrey Kamadi about her journey so far. Like many of the children in the village where she grew up, Esther Kioko’s favourite pastime was chasing grasshoppers, praying mantises, and other bugs. The children would disembowel the hapless critters using acacia thorns, […]

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South Africa’s brand-new MeerKAT telescope: We ain’t seen nothing yet

Last month, South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope discovered giant bubbles at the centre of our galaxy. This is the telescope’s second major finding—the first was one of the most magnetic objects in the Universe, a rare type of neutron star called a magnetar. But both of these discoveries were ‘accidents’, scientists say, and they are excited […]

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Educating children displaced by Boko Haram is vital for Nigeria’s future

‘People dumps’ that house children displaced by Boko Haram could become breeding grounds for extremism unless the educational provision in them improves drastically, writes David Mba. Perhaps Nobel-prize winning author Wole Soyinka put it best when he wrote: “One’s own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs.” It’s a useful […]

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