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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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How Africa’s Tech Generation Is Changing the Continent
November 21, 2017 | Blog
DESIGNING FOR AFRICA is the objective of many new technology ventures. Inspired by Silicon Valley, young entrepreneurs are bringing life-improving innovations to sub-Saharan communities. Robert Draper writes in national geographic that, Mark Kamau, Director of user-experience design for BRCK in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, holds a prototype for a mobile weather station.The continent is still a largely untapped market, particularly [...]
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The biomedical smart jacket that diagnoses pneumonia using Bluetooth
November 16, 2017 | Blog
Getting a pneumonia diagnosis wrong can be fatal. Ugandan inventor Brian Turyabagye, knows all too well. He has created a biomedical jacket known as Mama-Ope, that’s four times faster at diagnosing pneumonia than a doctor. The problem is particularly acute with infants. According to UNICEF, pneumonia kills half a million children under five each year in sub-Saharan [...]
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The Innovation Paradox : Developing-Country Capabilities and the Unrealized Promise of Technological Catch-Up
November 13, 2017 | Blog
Economists have long argued that developing countries have the potential for high productivity growth if they adopt existing technologies and apply them to the local context. The report brings to bear a battery of new data sources to explore the innovation “paradox”: despite the potential for very high returns, developing countries invest far less in [...]
Strengthening the pathways to success: The global challenge of learning
November 6, 2017 | Blog
One cannot deny that we are at an impasse. Globally, countries are trying to fix the gap between education systems and labour markets. How do we improve learning as work transforms? This question is even more urgent in Africa where the challenges of improving access and quality of education are met with serious budget constraints [...]
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Girls’ education is the best investment we can make to grow the world’s economies
| Blog
If you ask most people if they believe girls should go to school, they’ll answer yes. I would guess that most of you reading this right now are offended by the idea of a world where girls are still unequal to boys in education and opportunity. Yet this is the reality for 130 million girls [...]
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Local doctor gives brighter future to kids in Africa-Changing lives through education
| Blog
Meet Dr. Peter Nalos, saving millions of lives in Ethiopia, through surgery at the Bakersfield Heart Hospital surgery and changing lives through education in his spare time. It all started on a journey to one of his favorite places on earth-Africa, where animals roam free, where mother nature always puts on a show. Dr. Peter saw a [...]
SILICON LAGOON: AFRICA’S TECH REVOLUTION HEADS WEST
| Blog
Across the street from a church and in front of a dilapidated school is a grimy, sand-colored building that looks like any other here in Lagos, a prominent Nigerian port city. But inside is something far from ordinary: the center of West Africa’s burgeoning tech scene. On the walls, posters preach disruption: “Move fast and break [...]
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“The age of business focus, solely on profits is over” UNLEASHing a global hub for disruptive solutions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
November 2, 2017 | Blog
The past days at UNLEASH Innovation Program, were truly mind blowing! Last month, I was honored to be selected from over 10,000 applicants from 165+ countries to participate in an innovation lab to develop innovative and scalable solutions that address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in collaboration with other talents, companies, research institutions, [...]
Zim engineer publishes science textbooks for SA high school syllabuses
November 1, 2017 | Blog
Beginning of this week, Zimbabwean engineer Admire Mugwinyi, and founder of Awake Unto Righteousness International Ministries, published science textbooks, that simplify concepts and make Physical Sciences easy to understand. Mugwinyi, who studied Bio-resources Engineering, is an experienced teacher. He compiled and published three Physical Sciences textbooks for South Africa’s Grades 10, 11 and 12 (Form [...]
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Rebuilding Malawi through Science and Technology
October 31, 2017 | Blog
Professor Joey Ocon, one of the promising and young scientists who currently teaches and do researches at the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Department of Chemical Engineering, shared that there can be possible scientific works that will aid Malawi in it recovery phase. Rwanda’s former minister of science and technology, Romain Murenzi, recalled how science and technology [...]
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The peer review system has flaws. But it’s still a barrier to bad science
| Blog
Brenda Wingfield, Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DST-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor of Genetics, University of Pretoria writes in the conversation that, the peer review system has received a fair amount of negative press in recent years. It has been criticized largely because it is not particularly transparent and depends [...]
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Robotics competition prepares STEM students for championship
| Blog
The Petroleum Museum and Midland Lee High School hosted First Tech Challenge, where 20 teams from nine different schools compete against each other using robots they built themselves. Robots had to perform tasks like picking up items and placing them in a certain location. This is to prepare STEM students for championship. Watch [...]
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Giving women and girls the tech skills they need for the workforce of the future
| Blog
On average, women make up 30% of the people working in STEM-related jobs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite thousands of jobs being created in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) industries across Africa, gender discrimination and lack of access to education and technology means young women are often kept out of the workforce and unable [...]
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Science minister roots for technology at UN meet
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Olive Eyotaru writes in the observer that, strengthening the science and technology ecosystem is essential for solving pressing societal challenges, like limited access to quality health services, hunger and malnutrition, poverty, climate change effects and limited access to safe water. Minister Elioda Tumwesigye who heads Uganda’s science and technology docket, recently in Brussels, Belgium said that, [...]
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Rencontrez Jonathan Mboyo Esole, Fellow du NEF, qui travaille à promouvoir une culture d’excellence dans l’enseignement des sciences et la recherche scientifique
October 24, 2017 | Blog
Professeur de mathématiques à la Northeastern University (États-Unis), le scientifique congolais fait partie des 16 lauréats du Next Einstein Forum (NEF) qui se réuniront du 26 au 28 mars 2018 à Kigali, au Rwanda, à l’occasion d’une rencontre internationale où ils présenteront leurs recherches de pointe. Son travail se situe à l’intersection de la théorie [...]
Deepening cost of gender gap in Africa
| Blog
Gender inequality in Africa is a multi-layered and complex issue and class differences inform the articulation of how inequality is experienced by women. Low-income women are often trapped in an economic and cultural reality where girls are excluded from going to school; according to the UN only 39 per cent of girls in rural areas [...]
NEF on Flickr
NEF Community of Scientists Annual Meeting- Day3
