African scientists are about to get unprecedented access to enormous amounts of satellite data. This is thanks to a deal signed by the African Union with the European Commission’s Copernicus programme, which describes itself as the world’s third largest data provider. Scientists say that data generated by Copernicus’s satellites includes digital imagery of vegetation, soil and water cover, sea and land […]
Read More… from African agriculture has a lot to gain from increased access to big data
A new telescope was unveiled that will be built at the SKA South Africa site in the Karoo. The Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX) project is an international collaboration being led by scientists from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It’s an interferometer array that will be made up of 1024 6-metre dishes. Interferometer arrays are really cool because they […]
Read More… from New telescope chases the mysteries of radio flashes and dark energy
Biobanks are repositories which receive, store, process and disseminate specimens. These include DNA derived from humans and animals; bacterial strains; and environmental samples like plants and soil. Biobanks also provide the vital infrastructure for research to support scientific advancement and innovation. Dominique Anderson, Alan Christoffels and Carmen Swanepoel wrote in The Conversation that, according to a recent study, across the world, […]
Read More… from How biobanks can help improve the integrity of scientific research
Esther Nakkazi writes in scidev that, despite developing countries contributing nearly 0.1 per cent of the global emissions to climate change, they suffer more than 90 per cent of the global impacts because of their inability to adapt to climate change, according to the Global Climate Change Regime report published in 2013. As countries grapple with the challenges […]
Read More… from Why global South should lead solar geo-engineering R&D
The critical importance of conducting practical experiments as well as learning theory sets science education apart from many other taught courses. The value of this practical training is two-fold: first, it provides an in-depth understanding of the biological systems that are being studied. Second, the practice of science in industry or academia is essentially a […]
Read More… from A new way to equip Africa’s science labs: get students to build their own
Walk into any modern physics laboratory and you’ll see all kinds of hi-tech instruments. There are spectrometers, microscopes, oscilloscopes and diffractometers all spitting out data, spectra and images. In the developing world it’s difficult to get and maintain the hi-tech equipment we associate with modern laboratories. But could open-science hardware provide a lifeline? And what […]
Read More… from Open-science hardware in the developing world
The industrialization of agriculture began some 100 years ago. We are now witnessing its digitalization. But a wave of big data may sweep farmers off their land, unless they mark out a course in good time and decide which problems digital technologies should address. In the future, young farmers are likely to don digital glasses […]
Read More… from Big data is coming to agriculture. Farmers must set its course
Over the last few years, banks and other large companies have deployed their USSD applications at great cost due to the engineering effort and equipment required. Until very recently, individuals and small organizations could never even dream of building their own USSD apps. USSD stands for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data and supposedly it never got […]
Read More… from How a 20-year old mobile technology protocol is revolutionizing Africa
For more than a decade, entrepreneur Salma in Ghana has been quietly building up a multimillion-dollar oil and gas outfit called UBI Group. Salma Okonkwo is a rare woman to head up an energy company in Africa. In her interview with Forbes, “I don’t stop when the door is being shut. I find a way to make it work,”. […]
Read More… from Meet Salma Okonkwo, the brain behind Ghana’s biggest solar farm
Any good leader knows that scientific discovery and innovation fuel progress, facilitates development and can tackle issues such as food insecurity, water shortages and climate change. But most African governments are failing to fund research and development (R&D) adequately. According to the Unesco Institute for Statistics, countries in sub-Saharan Africa spend, on average, just 0.5% […]
Read More… from Science will unlock Africa’s potential — if it is funded