May 24, 2023
Africa: Africa's Scientists Need to Use Wastewater to Find Drug-Resistant Bacteria
People often think of wastewater as serving no purpose. But it can be a valuable source of information. Wastewater is increasingly recognised as a significant environmental… Read more »
May 11, 2023
Africa: African Scientists Are Working to Pool Data That Decodes Diseases - a Giant Step
Infectious disease outbreaks in African countries are, unfortunately, all too common. Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Uganda; Marburg virus in Guinea or Equatorial… Read more »
May 02, 2023
Africa: Enigmatic Human Fossil Jawbone May Be Evidence of an Early Homo Sapiens Presence in Europe - And Adds Mystery About Who Those Humans Were
Homo sapiens, our own species, evolved in Africa sometime between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Anthropologists are pretty confident in that estimate, based on fossil, genetic and… Read more »
May 03, 2023
Africa: Thirsty Tomatoes Emit Ultrasonic Sounds - and Other Plants May Be Listening
Plants may appear silent, indifferent organisms to us, but recent research has found they make high-pitched clicking sounds when they are struggling to find water. In principle,… Read more »
Africa: May 5, 2023, Lunar Eclipse Will Be a Subtle Show of Astronomical Wonder
On May 5, 2023, people around the world will witness a a lunar eclipse when the Earth gets between the Sun and the Moon and casts part of its shadow on the Moon. Read more »
April 19, 2023
Africa: Generative AI - 5 Essential Reads About the New Era of Creativity, Job Anxiety, Misinformation, Bias and Plagiarism
The light and dark sides of AI have been in the public spotlight for many years. Think facial recognition, algorithms making loan and sentencing recommendations, and medical image… Read more »
April 20, 2023
Rwanda: Rwanda and Nigeria Sign an Accord for More Responsible Exploration - Why This Matters
In 2020, the United States announced a framework for the private exploitation of space resources. It consists of practical principles to guide exploration, science and commerce in… Read more »
April 17, 2023
Africa: We Make Thousands of Unconscious Decisions Every Day. Here's How Your Brain Copes With That
Do you remember learning to drive a car? You probably fumbled around for the controls, checked every mirror multiple times, made sure your foot was on the brake pedal, then… Read more »
April 14, 2023
Africa: DNA Study Opens a Window Into African Civilisations That Left a Lasting Legacy
Pre-colonial African history is alive with tales of civilisations rising and falling and of different cultures intermingling across the continent. We have now shed more light on… Read more »
April 03, 2023
Southern Africa: Archaeology Shows How Hunter-Gatherers Fitted Into Southern Africa's First City, 800 Years Ago
Where the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers meet, forming the modern border between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, lies a hill that hardly stands out from the rest. One could easily… Read more »
March 30, 2023
Africa: Polio - Leading Virologist Offers a Beginner's Guide to the Different Viruses and Vaccines
On 17 March 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that health officials in Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had detected cases of vaccine-derived… Read more »
March 24, 2023
Africa: Covid Testing Led to New Techniques of Disease Diagnosis - Progress Mustn't Stop Now
In March 2020, weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic, its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivered a speech in which he… Read more »
March 19, 2023
Africa: The Limits of Expert Judgment - Lessons From Social Science Forecasting During the Pandemic
Imagine being a policymaker at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. You have to decide which actions to recommend, how much risk to tolerate and what sacrifices to ask your… Read more »
March 15, 2023
Africa: Curious Kids - How Are Planets Created?
Curious Kids is a series for children in which we ask experts to answer questions from kids. Read more »
March 13, 2023
Africa: Getting From Waste to Clean Water - Tiny Carbon Particles Can Do the Job
Many futuristic novels and films have explored what the world might look like without water. But water scarcity isn't a problem for the far-off future: it's already here. Read more »
February 25, 2023
Ghana: Ghana Needs More Astronomers, Astrophysicists, Aerospace Engineers and Astronauts - How to Develop Them
Perhaps when you think of scientific research in Africa you think of the continent's amazing natural resources, buried out of sight under soil or rocks. Or maybe your mind goes to… Read more »
February 23, 2023
Africa: Rejecting Science Has a Long History - the Pandemic Showed What Happens When You Ignore This
Fear engulfed everyone during the pandemic. Yet when a vaccine became available, it was met with fierce resistance. Anti-vaccination crowds formed, and some of these groups argued… Read more »
February 16, 2023
South Africa: Four Ways That Fossils Are Part of Everyday Life
South Africa boasts some of the best fossil records on Earth. Fossils are found in strata and rocks in many parts of the country. Some are billions of years old. Read more »
January 25, 2023
Africa: Fossil Teeth Reveal How Brains Developed Over Millions of Years of Human Evolution - New Research
Fossilized bones help tell the story of what human beings and our predecessors were doing hundreds of thousands of years ago. But how can you learn about important parts of our… Read more »
January 29, 2023
Africa: What Makes Archaeology Useful As Well As Exciting? It Offers Lessons From the Past
Archaeology is fun. It's so much fun that sometimes people do not treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Studying the past, through what people leave behind, can offer insights… Read more »
January 27, 2023
South Africa: Artificial Intelligence in South Africa Comes With Special Dilemmas - Plus the Usual Risks
When people think about artificial intelligence (AI), they may have visions of the future. But AI is already here. At its base, it is the recreation of aspects of human… Read more »
January 26, 2023
Africa: It'll Take 150 Years to Map Africa's Biodiversity - And We Can't Protect What We Don't Know
The African continent is bursting with biodiversity. In a 2016 report, the United Nations Environment Programme wrote: Read more »
January 25, 2023
Africa: Even Bivalent Updated Covid-19 Boosters Struggle to Prevent Omicron Subvariant Transmission - an Immunologist Discusses Why New Approaches Are Necessary
By almost any measure, the vaccination campaign against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been a global success. Read more »
Africa: Large Mammals Shaped the Evolution of Humans - Here's Why It Happened in Africa
That humans originated in Africa is widely accepted. But it's not generally recognised how unique features of Africa's ecology were responsible for the crucial evolutionary… Read more »
January 20, 2023
Africa: Scientists Have Started Steering Lightning With Lasers - Here's How
Lightning may look beautiful but every year it kills thousands of people, does huge amounts of damage to buildings and infrastructure, and causes power outages. Read more »