Muza Gondwe from Malawi is presently on a six-month fellowship at the Centre of African Studies on the Public Understanding of Science in Africa in Cambridge. She writes on BMJ Blogs about her project which seeks to develop ways of engaging science through communication in Malawi and to identify and celebrate distinguished black African pioneers of science. She was motivated to do this after reading these:
“It will be seen that when we classify mankind by colour, the only one of the primary races, given by this classification, which has not made a creative contribution to any one of our twenty-one civilizations is the Black Race.” – Dr. Arnold Toynbee, The Study of History, Vol. I, page 233. (Vol I: Introduction; The Geneses of Civilizations (Oxford University Press 1934).
“[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.” James Watson, in 2007 in an interview with the Sunday Times.
And what does she find?
In my investigation I have learnt some startling facts: no black African has won any of the Nobel prizes in science; the UK has six times as many researchers as Sub-Saharan Africa; and, according to the Mathematicians of the African Diaspora (MAD), 0.1% of the total number of mathematicians in the world are of black African heritage.
The full post is here.
Muza Gondwe’s personal blog, “Communicating science, the African way” is here.
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This is an interesting read which easily qualified as one of those depressing pieces on African backwardness. However, on a closer look, I have to say that it is not essentially about how slow the continent and it’s people have been in contributing to or advancing mainstream science, but rather it comments on the need to celebrate those that have and ultimately improve the scores by encouraging more black Africans to embrace science.
African institutions suffer from many ills that impede scientifc development but the greatest has been the stifling of innovation through the poor construct and implementation of the relationship between teacher and taught.
The inclusion of A. Toynbee’s 1934 (1934?!!!) article in this discussion, neglects the rise of contemporary African minds and efforts. Our world is rapidly changing. To add J. Watson’s views seriously encumbers the arguments. Such wind should be left out. As to the white male stereotype in the broader article, I can only laugh.
Thanks for sharing Seye (gotta love your new blog theme).