GUEST BLOG POST: Science In Africa: Homegrown Solutions And Talent Must Come First — Alan Christoffels

There’s more and more good science news coming from Africa. Romolo Tavani/Shutterstock

It’s been a recurring refrain: Africa still lags woefully behind the rest of the world in generating new scientific knowledge.

As figures collated by the World Bank in 2014 show, the continent – home to around 16% of the world’s population – produces less than 1% of the world’s research output.

These are painful admissions to make as the continent prepares to celebrate Africa Day on May 25. But there are several projects and initiatives that offer hope amid all the bad news.

One is a major funding and agenda setting platform, the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa based in Nairobi, Kenya, which was established by the African Academy of Sciences in partnership with NEPAD. It will award research grants to African universities, advise on financial best practice and develop a science strategy for Africa. It also offers an opportunity for African scientists to speak with one voice when it comes to aligning a research and development agenda for African countries.

Another is the US’s National Institute of Health and Wellcome Trust’s commitment to invest nearly US$ 200 million into Africa-led genomics projects, biobanks and training of bioinformatics personnel. This investment targets diseases that affect the African continent and gives African scientists the opportunity to set priorities with regard to health interventions and skills development.

And some countries on the continent are starting to realise just how important it is to retain talent and skills. They are investing in human capital development and building infrastructure to keep African scientists in Africa – or to attract them back home once they’ve studied elsewhere. All of this will help to shift the continent’s economies towards becoming knowledge-based.

These are all promising steps in the right direction. But more work and focus is needed across the continent.

Political will lagging

The underlying reason for the dispiriting figures shared by the World Bank is multifaceted but simple: Africa does not produce enough scientists.

The continent currently has only 198 researchers per million people. That’s compared to 455 per million in Chile, and more than 4,500 per million in the UK and the US. If it’s to match the world average for the number of researchers per million people – around 1,150 – the continent needs another million new PhDs.

Political will is desperately needed to achieve that goal. It is sorely lacking in most African countries. In 2006, members of the African Union endorsed a target for each nation to spend 1% of its Gross Domestic Product on research and development. Yet as of 2017 only three countries – South Africa, Malawi and Uganda – have reached this goal.

And while more African authors are producing research and being published in international journals, a great deal of this work is being conducted in collaboration with international partners.

The vital role of international partnerships in driving innovation in Africa is unquestionable. But at the same time, the dependence on international collaboration and investment without any pan-African framework for increasing and sustaining local funding, limits Africa’s ability to drive a scientific agenda that is aligned to its specific needs.

Homegrown initiatives

That’s why African-led initiatives like the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science inAfrica, Human, Heredity and Health in Africa Programme and the Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium– through which genomics programmes on the continent are being funded – are so important.

For instance, the funding the National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust are channelling through the Human, Heredity and Health in Africa Programme has catalysed regional efforts to establish guidelines for biobanks in South Africa, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.

Genetic material of African origin is key to the development of more effective vaccines or understanding disease mechanisms. Biobanks provide both the infrastructure and protocols to accurately store these biological samples, and in the context of pandemics like Ebola scientists have access to the biological material to find vaccines.

In supporting biobanks and more generally genetics laboratories, my team has built the open-source Baobab LIMS through European Union funding to track the lifespan of a biological sample in a laboratory. This means a researcher can trace what happens to a biological sample or where it is located. Currently this technology is being used at labs in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Tunisia.

But building laboratories isn’t enough. To keep growing and improving its scientific output, Africa needs to pay urgent attention to retaining talent.

The continent’s unstable research funding streams mean that scientists tend to be employed only on short-term contracts. As a result, 48% of researchers in Southern Africa are spending less than two years at any one institution. This number drops to 39% for East Africa.

The impact of short-term contracts will be felt in the research and development space where we do not have sufficient time to build critical mass. This results in continuous initiation of new projects without building on existing knowledge and seeking interventions that are sustainable.

This short-term thinking also means that brilliant African thinkers and scientists are lost to the continent. And there is no doubt that retaining such scientists makes a difference. Take the case of Professor Abdoulaye Djimde. The continent needs more like him.

Djimde, one of my collaborators, is chief of the Molecular Epidemiology and Drug Resistance Unit at the Malaria Research and Training Centre University of Bamako, Mali. He returned to Mali in 2001 after completing his PhD in genetics in the US.

Over a period of 17 years, he has rolled out a research development strategy that attracted millions of dollars in investment to build infrastructure in his home country. He’s also obtained funding to develop the next generation of African scientists through the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science (DELTAS) Africa programme. The continent needs to keep more of its Professor Djimdes at home if it’s to keep growing.

Originally published on THE CONVERSATION

GUEST BLOG POST: BARRIERS TO BOOKS: Nigeria Has Produced Some Of The World’s Best Authors—So Why Is Its Reading Culture So Poor? — Fareeda Abdulkareem

More options than interest? (AP/Sunday Alamba)

Back in February, Nigeria’s Guaranty Trust Bank announced the launch of The Dusty Manuscript, a contest for Nigerian crime and romance fiction writers with finished but unpublished novels.

The top three authors from the contest will get a publishing contract with Kachifo, one of the country’s renowned publishing houses. Kachifo distributes some of the Nigeria’s best known authors, including Chimamanda Adichie, Jowhor Ile, and Eghosa Imasuen.

Over the last decade a number of literary prizes like these have helped support Nigeria’s literary fiction circles. They include the 9Mobile Prize for Literature, backed by the telecommunications company formerly known as Etisalat, the Nigeria Prize for Literature, sponsored by the NLNG gas company, and the Miles Morland grant, which supports authors working on a novel for a year.

While these prizes will help up and coming writers gain exposure as well as the chance to sell their work, it’s important to ask what kind of market their books will be entering.

 The reality on the ground is that demand for literary fiction in Nigeria is low. 

Nigeria’s rich literary history includes some of the world’s most respected authors, such as Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, which has been translated to more than 50 languages; Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first’ Nobel laureate for literature, and Florence Nwapa, who is often referred to as the “mother” of modern African literature. In the current era, Nigeria boasts one of the world’s best known authors in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose literary success has been amplified by her commentary on everything from feminism to African politics.

Despite that rich history and the current growth and interest, the reality on the ground is that demand for literary fiction in Nigeria is low.

It’s unclear if it’s about people not wanting to read for leisure, or in fact not having access to fiction. Books have become increasingly expensive in the country as bookshops have shuttered, and with an adult literacy rate of 51%, it’s not surprising that some supporters of literature in the country are concerned about how novelists might fare once their books are published.

 “Forget the number of books you see being sold in traffic and our global acclaim for excelling—Nigerians read only when they have to.” 

Wale Adetula, the founder of The Naked Convos, one of Nigeria’s popular youth-oriented blogs, is one of those people. He conducted an online poll surveying over a thousand users of his site on their reading habits, and found that many said they only read one book a year. These results inspired him to launch the TNC Stories app, which carries the disconcerting tagline, “Reading is dead.” This app allows contributors to create and share stories using text video, audio and music—Adetula’s attempt to keep Nigerians reading, albeit in non-conventional forms.

“The reading culture in Nigeria is poor,” Adetula says. “Forget the number of books you see being sold in traffic and our global acclaim for excelling—Nigerians read only when they have to.”

Adetula believes a culture of reading is not being written into Nigeria’s educational system. “Students see it as some sort of necessary evil. And it becomes harder when you have to deal with the many distractions and challenges that come with being an adult and living in a country like Nigeria.”

Indeed, most of the sales for Farafina Books, an imprint of Kachifo, and one of the country’s most popular publishing houses, come from religious or educational texts, not fiction, according to a senior editor there.

Okada Books, one of the sponsors of the Dusty Manuscript contest, also makes much of its money selling educational, self-help, and motivational titles, but is similarly trying to cultivate a love of reading amongst young Nigerians. The free reading app publishes ebooks written by Nigerian authors covering a host of genres, from memoir to comedy to thrillers. Customer support representative Karo Oforofuo says that authors from the diaspora have reached out to discuss potentially distributing their books to an African audience on the app.

Oforofuo believes Nigerian reading culture “is getting better by the day, given the computer age and advent of ebooks.” Nigeria has a limited number of bookshops, and printing books domestically is a difficult and expensive process. Ebooks are easier to distribute, as people only need the app to download as many books as they want, Oforofuo says.

In 2011, academics from Lagos State University released a paper titled “Poor Reading Habits Among Nigerians,” which cited the benefits of reading for self-improvement and mental and emotional health and hypothesized that Nigeria’s reading culture had suffered from widespread poverty, corruption, deprioritization, and a dearth of dedicated quiet reading spaces like libraries. “A reading nation is an informed nation,” the authors write. “Nigeria cannot be regarded as a reading nation because the younger generation of Nigerians does not consider reading a leisure activity.”

The Nigerian literary canon will keep expanding and developing, thanks in part to the interest expressed by private institutions. But it won’t get far if it doesn’t spread to the offices of elected representatives, or if people don’t view reading as a enjoyable hobby. If new genres continue to be supported, books redistributed and reoriented as multimedia content, and the government takes an active role in the refurbishment of existing libraries and the redesign of the school curriculum, some things might change. For now, the players in the small, but growing industry keep fighting to keep reading alive.

Originally published on QUARTZ

NEWS POST: First African ATM Pharmacy Launched In South Africa

"ATM pharmacy" launched in South Africa, patient waiting times cut to under 3 minutes

An ‘ATM pharmacy’ that gives patients with chronic illnesses their repeat medication in under three minutes was officially opened in Alexandra today.

The innovative Pharmacy Dispensing Unit™ (PDU™) is the first of its kind in Africa and was developed by a team comprising experts from Right to Care and Right ePharmacy in collaboration with the Gauteng Department of Health. The Pharmacy Dispensing Unit works like an ATM for medication, with Skype-like audio-visual interaction between patient and tele-pharmacists, cloud based electronic software and robotic technology to dispense and label medication.

Right to Care CEO, Professor Ian Sanne says, “Our partnerships made this innovation possible and we are grateful to the Gauteng Provincial Health Department and for the contributions of USAID, GIZ who are implementing on behalf of the German Government and Mach4. The PDUTM was developed to ensure accurate dispensing and quick collection. A clinically stable patient on chronic medication can be given the option to collect chronic prescriptions from the PDUTM pharmacy. While driven by sophisticated technology, patients’ concerns and information needs are still handled one-on-one by tele-pharmacists.

Manning the Pharmacy Dispensing Unit 

Sanne added, “Alexandra Plaza, where our first PDU is located, is a central community shopping centre which is on transport routes and it is open on weekends and public holidays. Sites in Diepsloot and two sites in Soweto have also been selected for the pilot of this public pharmacy programme.”

Gauteng Health MEC, Gwen Ramokgopa, says, “This is a great step forward for patients in our city as it dramatically reduces waiting times and congestion in public healthcare facilities. In Alex, there are eight primary healthcare clinics in the vicinity which refer patients.

“The system is run by qualified pharmacists and pharmacy assistants and integrates with the clinical management of patients with chronic conditions at public facilities. It also supports adherence. The date for the next collection is shown on the receipt the patient receives when collecting medication and prescription collection reminders are sent by SMS. Late collections are immediately flagged for follow up. It also offers patients service in all eleven languages and there is support at the site to help patients deal with the technology.”

Sophisticated technology notwithstanding, patients’ concerns and information needs are still handled one-on-one by tele-pharmacists

US Charge d’Affaires Jessica Lapenn explains, “This ATM-like approach to dispensing medication demonstrates innovative thinking to overcome challenges we encounter in ensuring people stay on HIV treatment or treatment for other chronic illnesses. We are pleased to have partnered with Right to Care on this and other innovations for people living with HIV. The Pharmacy Dispensing Unit is a unique solution that uses technology to move beyond traditional healthcare delivery. It is a wonderful example of commitment by the United States Government to the people of South Africa through PEPFAR to help create a safer, healthier, and brighter future for South Africans.”

“Improving access to medication is key,” said Klaus Streicher, Deputy Head of Mission at the German Embassy in Pretoria. “The PDU promises to significantly improve people’s ability to deal with their illnesses. The German government is pleased to be a part of this multi-stakeholder partnership which brings together government, international donors and the private sector.”

Medicine is dispensed in a simple 5-step process:

Patient scans barcode ID book, ID card or pharmacy card and enters PIN

Patient talks to a remote pharmacist

The prescription and or items are selected

The medicine is robotically dispensed and labelled and drops in the collection slot

Patient takes receipt which indicates next collection date.

Fanie Hendriksz, managing director of Right ePharmacy comments, “This pharmacy enhances access to quality pharmaceutical services and improves patient convenience. The early benefits have shown valuable patient and community data trends that are needed to improve patient outcomes. The technology is making it easier for people with various illnesses to have access to medication, ultimately improving adherence.”

Originally published on GBC GHANA and EWN