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Second edition of Next Einstein Forum Africa Science Week begins in 35 countries
KIGALI, Rwanda, 10 September 2018 – The Next Einstein Forum (NEF), an initiative of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in partnership with Robert Bosch Stiftung, today announced the beginning of NEF Africa Science Week in 35 African countries throughout the months of September, October and December 2018. NEF Africa Science Week are led [...]
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Cities must lead the clean energy drive, says report
Did you know, that poor households in cities spend 14-22% of their income on energy? As urban growth intensifies energy use, cities must lead with efficient fuels and renewables. Cities can implement practical solutions to meet the need of the urban under-served through development models that slow carbon emissions & shift to cleaner cooking fuels [...]
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Cities must lead the clean energy drive, says report
May 17, 2019 | Blog
Did you know, that poor households in cities spend 14-22% of their income on energy? As urban growth intensifies energy use, cities must lead with efficient fuels and renewables. Cities can implement practical solutions to meet the need of the urban under-served through development models that slow carbon emissions & shift to cleaner cooking fuels [...]
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Scientists have created a silicon beating heart
May 7, 2019 | Blog
Researchers have created an artificial, silicone heart to help combat the shortage of donor hearts. The silicone heart has been developed by Nicholas Cohrs, a doctoral student in the group led by Wendelin Stark, Professor of Functional Materials Engineering at ETH Zurich. It looks like a real heart. And this is the goal of the first [...]
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Young African Robotics Designers Sparking at Pan African Robotic competition in Senegal (PARC 2018)
May 6, 2019 | Blog
Technology is taking part everywhere in this modern era of time, specially to face the challenges that require a sustainable development and help less fortune communities to have the privilege of standard living conditions. Africa by its high potential and promising future should be in the front line for implementing the technology that help local [...]
Black Holes, Africa and the Future of Astrophysics
| Blog
In a major scientific breakthrough, astronomers on 10 April 2019 unveiled the globally anticipated image, which reveals a halo of hot gas and plasma around the event horizon of a black hole. This discovery confirms, yet again, the predictions from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and includes the contributions of scientists from Africa. The involvement [...]
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Africa Must Produce Technology
April 30, 2019 | Blog
Maths and science key to future, writes Neil Turok. Angelina Lutambi was born into a peasant family in Tanzania’s Dodoma region, where HIV and Aids has decimated much of the population. Her future could easily have been bleak – but Lutambi had a keen aptitude for maths. Today she is a senior research scientist at [...]
African Higher Education Summit in Dakar, Senegal
March 10, 2019 | Blog
Live Event: The African Higher Education Summit Dakar, Senegal Join global policy makers, entrepreneurs, academics and international development partners as they develop a common vision geared towards transforming Africa’s higher education system. Dr. Khumbah: “Technical mastery differentiates the developed world from the underdeveloped.” Dr. Green: “Africa has no time to waste. We need to look at initiatives [...]
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At Davos 2019, NEF Experts Examine How to Accelerate Innovation in Africa
March 1, 2019 | Blog, Multimedia
By building a home-grown scientific and technology capacity, added to a pan-African ecosystem of knowledge and innovation, Africa can get past most of the stumbling blocks hindering its development, said experts from the Next Einstein Forum at Davos 2019. The experts took part in ‘Conversations in coLaboratory’, a space for world leaders to engage in [...]
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I have no doubt the next great scientific minds will be from Africa
February 5, 2019 | Blog
Low levels of investment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education have the potential to gravely affect Africa’s growth, impeding the competitiveness of many of its nations on a global scale. It is time for a wake-up call. There are signs the continent is thriving economically. But is it sustainable without a workforce that will build [...]
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The Next Einstein Forum publishes first issue multidisciplinary journal Scientific African and accompanying Scientific African Magazine
December 20, 2018 | Blog, News
Kigali, Rwanda – 20 December 2018 The Next Einstein Forum (NEF) – Africa’s global forum for science in Africa – is pleased to announce the launch of the first issue of Scientific African, and its sister publication Scientific African Magazine. Published quarterly, Scientific African is a peer-reviewed, open access, inter- and multidisciplinary scientific journal that is dedicated to [...]
The Next Einstein Forum launches search for Africa’s top scientific talent for prestigious Fellows Class
November 13, 2018 | Blog
We’re thrilled to launch the search for the third Class of NEF Fellows, 2019 – 2021. Application to the NEF Fellows programme is open to Africans from around the world – including those who currently reside in the Diaspora – in all fields of science, including the social sciences and technology fields. Applicants must be [...]
IBM Files Patent for Blockchain-Based AR Helper System
November 7, 2018 | Blog
IBM has filed a patent for a blockchain-based system which will prevent players of augmented reality games entering physical spaces that are undesirable. Augmented reality is a technology which adds layers to physical reality. An example is Zombie GO, an AR game which places zombie in real life or perhaps the most famous example, Pokemon Go. AR can have [...]
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L’Afrique prend sa place dans l’avancée de l’intelligence artificielle
| Blog
La grande majorité des experts en IA se trouvent en Amérique du Nord, en Europe et en Asie. L’Afrique, en particulier, est à peine représentée. Ce manque de diversité peut non intentionnellement enraciner les biais algorithmiques et construire une discrimination pour les produits dérivés de l’IA. Ce n’est pas le seul défi : moins de [...]
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Africa’s future needs a better research culture and not just for scientists
November 5, 2018 | Blog
Of the many developmental challenges facing Africa, scientific research doesn’t often rise to the top of the discussion agenda, though thankfully that has been changing with high profile initiatives like the Next Einstein Forum. And yet research and development will be key to the kinds of improvements that African citizens need and expect. The priorities, or [...]
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Look to Africa to advance artificial intelligence
October 25, 2018 | Blog
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing society as profoundly as the steam engine and electricity have done. But unlike past technological revolutions, the AI revolution offers a unique chance to improve lives without opening up and exacerbating global inequalities. That will require widening of the locations where AI is done. The vast majority of experts are in [...]
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Gov’t pledges 1% GDP to support STEM education
October 9, 2018 | Blog
Government has pledged a minimum of one per cent of GDP towards the promotion of research and development expenditure of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education in the country. Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has said in many advanced countries, conservative estimates have it that the direct and indirect contribution of [...]
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Second edition of Next Einstein Forum Africa Science Week begins in 35 countries
September 10, 2018 | Blog, News
KIGALI, Rwanda, 10 September 2018 – The Next Einstein Forum (NEF), an initiative of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in partnership with Robert Bosch Stiftung, today announced the beginning of NEF Africa Science Week in 35 African countries throughout the months of September, October and December 2018. NEF Africa Science Week are led [...]
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Arx Pax Hoverboard, New Maglev System Paves Way For Flying Cars
June 15, 2015 | Blog
Arx Pax is pioneering a new kind of magnetic levitation that is much less expensive than existing maglev systems, which could lead to widespread adoption of maglev technology. Last fall, small startup Arx Pax nearly broke the internet with a Kickstarter campaign that many thought was too good to be true—it was building a real-life [...]
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Ardusat Launches Kids’ Science Experiments on Space Odyssey
| Blog
Next time you look up at the sky and spot one of the 1,100 satellites in orbit, it might be capturing data for your kids’ science project. In August 2014, US students submitted proposals for projects which would use two weeks of data collected by Ardusatsatellites. The 15 winning teams, selected by astronauts at the Association of Space Explorers, [...]
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Eco-Friendly Electric Cars In African Green Revolution – CNN.Com
| Blog
Sleek chassis, alluring paintwork and a need for speed, but these are no ordinary motors. When pedal hits metal, an eco-friendly process gets set in motion. Powered by electricity and engineered for efficiency, car enthusiasts from across Africa are sparking home-grown concepts that have gotten experts revving. ABUCAR 2 In Zaria, a city in northern [...]
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Could A Computer Predict The Next Pandemic?
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Using a computer to predict an infectious disease outbreak before it starts may sound like a bit of Philip K. Dick sci-fi, but scientists are coming close. In a new study, researchers have used machine learning—teaching computers to recognize patterns in large data sets—to make accurate forecasts about which animals might harbor dangerous viruses, bacteria, [...]
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Rwanda: Delivering Gender Equality Requires Bold Steps – Kagame
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Achieving gender parity is a joint effort between men and women and requires bold steps, not an incremental approach, President Paul Kagame has said. The President was, yesterday, speaking on a panel titled, “What Would You Do to Make the World Better for Women and Girls? A Conversation and Call to Action,” at the ongoing [...]
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How IBM Is Fighting Ebola With Supercomputers
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Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg aren’t the only Silicon Valley heavyweights fighting Ebola: IBM is using its tech know-how to help curb the spread of the disease in West Africa. The company is teaming up with Sierra Leone’s Open Government Initiative, Cambridge University’s Africa’s Voices project, telco firm Airtel, and Kenya’s Echo Mobile for various efforts aimed [...]
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Solving Hunger in Ethiopia by Turning to Native Crops
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Dibaabish Jaboo kneads the pale, vegetative flesh of the enset plant, like her mother did, like her granddaughters do. When she’s finished, she bundles the plant’s thick, decomposing stalk into its 12-foot-long leaves along with spices and agents to help it ferment for a few weeks. Once it’s ready, she can store the bundle underground, or pound [...]
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The Innovators: The Biotech Firm Hoping To Breed An End To Dengue Fever
| Blog
When the taps ran dry in São Paulo neighbourhoods during a drought earlier this year, residents took to storing water in pots and tanks in their homes. The resultant surge in the mosquito population led to the tripling in dengue fever cases across Brazil. The 500,000 Brazilians who caught the disease – the effects of [...]
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The 31 Year-Old Entrepreneur Who Is Challenging PayPal In Kenya
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Danson Muchemi, 31, is the founder of JamboPay, Kenya’s leading Online Payment Gateway. JamboPay, which was founded in 2009, now has more than 1,500 institutional clients and processes more than $50 million in payments every year. The company has a presence in Kenya, Tanzania and Senegal and is expanding to 4 additional countries before the [...]
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Africa developing its first supercomputer outside South Africa
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“Outside of South Africa, there is little to no capacity for cloud computing on the continent,” wrote Erik Hersman on his blog, White African. “This means that few of the programmers in this region have the skill sets necessary to work and build out this infrastructure. We have a severely limited foundation on which to build future services in [...]
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Scientists In Kenya Find Oldest Known Tools On Earth.
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A team of scientists working in Kenya says it has unearthed the oldest tools ever discovered, dating back 3.3 million years ago. The stone flake tools are 700,000 years older than the earliest known stone tools, predating modern humans by 500,000 years and “suggesting that our ancestors were crafting tools several hundred thousand years before our genus Homo arrived [...]
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Why Do So Few Women Work in New York (And So Many in Minneapolis)? Labor Supply of Married Women across U.S. Cities
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Abstract: This paper documents a little-noticed feature of U.S. labor markets — very large variation in the labor supply of married women across cities. We focus on cross-city differences in commuting times as a potential explanation for this variation. We start with a model in which commuting times introduce non-convexities into the budget set. Empirical [...]
Reversing Africa’s Medical Brain Drain
June 2, 2015 | Blog
OXFORD – There is understandable consternation over Uganda’s plan to send almost 300 health workers to Trinidad and Tobago. The plan reportedly includes four of Uganda’s 11 registered psychiatrists, 20 of its 28 radiologists, and 15 of its 92 pediatricians. In return, the Caribbean country (which has a doctor-to-patient ratio 12 times higher than Uganda’s) [...]
So People Hate Maths? Here’s my plan to make it work for them: Marcus du Sautoy
| Blog
The Labour party has made a commitment to ensure that every young person studies mathematics up to the age of 18. Of course, the people it will affect don’t have the vote – although if it was up to Labour they would: to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote is one of their [...]
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Scientists in Kenya Believe They’ve Just Found the Oldest Tools Ever Discovered
| Blog
A team of scientists working in Kenya says it has unearthed the oldest tools ever discovered, dating back 3.3 million years ago. The stone flake tools are 700,000 years older than the earliest known stone tools, predating modern humans by 500,000 years and “suggesting that our ancestors were crafting tools several hundred thousand years before our genus Homo arrived [...]
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One Doctor’s Quest to Save the World With Data
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IN RWANDA, PEOPLE have to deal with all kinds of threats to their health: malaria, HIV/AIDS, severe diarrhea. But in late 2012, Agnes Binagwaho, Rwanda’s Minister of Health, realized her country’s key health enemy was something far more innocuous. The thing causing the most harm to her people, the leading risk factor for premature death [...]
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NEF on Flickr
NEF Community of Scientists Annual Meeting- Day3
