The Realities in Our Environment: A Common Good Challenged
The earth’s ecosystems operate in complex cycles and interconnections between the lithosphere hydrosphere, biosphere and the atmosphere, with flows and stores of matter enclosed within defined boundaries. Human activity is disrupting the flows and stores in complex...
Importance of STEM for advancing science in Africa
Many current scientific discoveries have a bearing in Africa, for example, African cattle and sheep herders recognize their herd through facial and pattern recognition. In addition, Africa is a hotspot for many natural resources including flora and fauna that have and...
Help Address the Inequality
The Sahel and West Africa club have identified several policies and customs which put African girls and women at a disadvantage. Read here their analysis of the economic and human rights consequences that result from gender disparity, along with discussion of policy...
We Have Much Further To Go
Women in Africa have gained much ground and recognition in the sciences, but we have much further to go. This article, shared my former President of Mauritius Ameenah Gurib, highlights some of the challenges and ways forward for women:
Women in Science in Africa:Perspective, Observations, Challenges, Opportunities and Recommendations.
Despite various initiatives, the number of women in science (WiS) in Africa remains low, and globally the gender gap in science persists, particularly in math-intensive fields such as engineering. As of March 2019, data from Engineering Registration Board revealed...
SASA’s Vision of the Role of Science in African Socio-Economic Development
SASA’s vision is to advance science, improve health, and economic and social development on the African continent. SASA seeks to support and advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and raise the levels of development across African countries and...
Universal access to safe drinking water: challenge or solved problem?
The discourse regarding on universal access to safe drinking water is currently quite complex. There is a general perception that safe drinking water for low-income communities is technically and economically very difficult to achieve, in particular in rural areas of...
Progress in rolling out of national power grids has stalled across Africa
Power cuts continued to plague some African countries. (SASA Image) Carolyn Logan, Michigan State University Three years ago the African Development Bank launched an initiative to speed up the supply of electricity in Africa in 2016. Launching the New Deal on Energy...
Basic and Applied Science
Quite a bit has been said and written about the dismal state of science and research in Africa. Africa lags behind all other continents in terms of indices of scientific activity as measured by the number of academic researchers per 1 million population, the number of...
Mining and Metallurgy
Africa has abundant natural resources which include Critical Raw Materials (CRM) which are fundamental to the modern economies of other countries. Further, among the CRM are the critical earth minerals which are critical to high tech industry and are geostrategic in the highly industrialized countries because of the major role these elements play in defense, aerospace, security and the lack of domestic supplies in most industrialized countries. The critical minerals include the platinum-group metals (PGM), indium, cobalt, manganese, tungsten, germanium, niobium, tantalum, gallium, antimony and the rare-earth elements (REE) or rare earth metal (REM).