University of Cambridge publishes special Africa edition of Research Horizons magazine

Research Horizons, the University of Cambridge’s specialist research magazine, is devoting its latest issue to Africa. The magazine’s publication will coincide with the launch of a month-long “Spotlight on Africa”, during which a daily Africa-related story will appear on the University’s research page. Articles in this special issue of Research Horizons (PDF attached) focus on education, health, art, sanitation, religion, energy, nutrition, food security, peace-building, infection and history. Among the stories featured are:

• The ‘Iron Lady’ trialling a new supplement to combat anaemia in The Gambia;
• Anglo-African collaborations to increase agricultural productivity in Ghana and Ethiopia;
• Ideas of peace and the politics of conflict in Burundi;
• And the scientist who answered the call of duty to combat Ebola in Sierra Leone

The issue includes a special pull-out map showing Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, and a feature on the University’s flagship Cambridge-Africa Programme, which makes the mentorship and expertise of our researchers available to African researchers working in Africa on African priorities.

CONTENT:
https://issuu.com/uni_cambridge/docs/issue_32_research_horizons

Education is everything
Half the children in Africa miss out on school and basic learning as a result of poverty, gender or disability. Professor Pauline Rose in the Faculty of Education is highlighting the factors that limit children’s learning and the mechanisms that can improve the effectiveness of teaching. Recently, her team has been working with the non-profit organisation CamFed (Campaign for Female Education) – which since 1993 has supported more than 1.6 million students in five African countries to attend primary and secondary school. Rose has been investigating how Camfed’s programmes are meeting the needs of those who are most marginalised, asking what works, why and how much it costs.

The Iron Lady
Iron deficiency can be fatal. But in countries where patients are also likely to have other serious diseases, so too can the iron supplements used to treat it. Nearly 12 years ago, Dr Dora Pereira – sometimes referred to as ‘The Iron Lady’ – was part of the team who had an idea for a new supplement. She now leads its clinical trial in The Gambia.

Call of duty
Working in a lab as a basic scientist can often seem far removed from the real world. But Professor Ian Goodfellow discovered that the skills he learned there would turn out to be surprisingly useful in fighting one of the most terrifying disease outbreaks of recent times: Ebola. He helped set up one of the first diagnostic laboratories in an EbolaTreatment Centre near Makeni, Sierra Leone.

When ideas of peace meet politics of conflict

Dr Devon Curtis, an expert in peacebuilding as a result of working with governments and the UN, shows how international ideas, practices and language of conflict resolution are transformed when they meet African “realities and politics on the ground” in Burundi. With a network of African scholars, she has turned her attention to possible new approaches and ideas of peacebuilding.

The battle to have a baby in Africa
The number of women who develop fatal complications during pregnancy and childbirth is so high in Africa that, in some cultures, women equate giving birth with going into battle. Ugandan Dr Annettee Nakimuli had been working with Cambridge’s Professor Ashley Moffett to uncover why so many women of African descent suffer pre-eclampsia. While Nakimuli and Moffett continue pinpointing the genetic basis of preeclampsia, and hope to bring out the first comprehensive textbook on African obstetrics, they are aware that one of the key issues surrounding pregnancy is that too many African women go to hospital too late, leaving it until their complications are advanced and dangerous. Dr Sharath Srinivasan, Head of Cambridge’s Centre of Governance and Human Rights, leads Africa’s Voices, a project aimed at understanding the thoughts and opinions of people in hard-to-reach African communities. He and colleagues have developed a methodology that can take data from radio programmes that encourage listener responses to draw out insights into attitudes to pregnancy.

The Bible as a weapon of war
What happens when former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) soldiers, those who have used the Bible as a weapon of war, return home from the front lines? How do former soldiers – male and female, adults and children – learn to reread and reinterpret scriptures that once spoke to them of fire and brimstone? This is the puzzle facing Dr Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala from Makerere University in Uganda working with Dr Emma Wild-Wood, from the Faculty of Divinity and the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.

Of cabbages and cows
Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes involving African researchers in Ghana and Ethiopia ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields. The aim is to ensure not only that every harvest is successful, but also that it’s maximally successful.

Keeping the lights on in Ghana
When Professor Abu Yaya from Ghana discovered that a retired lab technician had a stockpile of clays and feldspar he started to wonder why his country imports all of its electroporcelain – a small but crucial component for electrical power transmission. This led to a collaboration with Cambridge materials scientist Dr Kevin Knowles that Yaya hopes will one day result in Ghana being able to manufacture affordable insulators, helping to expand the electrical infrastructure and reduce the frequent blackouts.

Five years, five students: 25 Cambridge-African scholars

Taskeen Adam from South Africa and Richmond Juvenile Ehwi from Ghana are part of a PhD programme that’s enrolling five African students per year for five years, to help train world-class researchers for Africa.

Waste not, want not in Tanzania
Susannah Duck and Izhan Khan describe working with a Tanzanian community to install a sewage system that ‘digests’ and ‘cooks’ human waste into fuel and fertiliser. Their work is part of the student-led Cambridge Development Initiative (CDI), a volunteer organisation that works with African communities and students. One of their aims is to integrate research and innovations at the University of Cambridge to improve the quality of life for the Tanzanian underprivileged.

Carriers of culture
When Baptist missionary Reverend Kenred Smith captured moments of life with his camera in the Congo over 120 years ago he couldn’t have imagined the photos would be chosen by a Congolese community to help them remember a country that many of them had fled. The photos are in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and were chosen by the Congolese Great Lakes Initiative as the basis of an exhibition in Cambridge to help them and their children reconnect with their heritage.

Curious Objects – Asante gold weights
Among Cambridge University Library’s extraordinary collection of around eight million books, manuscripts and digital holdings are some unexpected items, including a set of weights made by the gold-rich Asante people of West Africa.

Cambridge-Africa Programme
Cambridge-Africa is Cambridge’s university-wide institutional structure to make its expertise, resources and influence available to support African researchers working in Africa on African priorities. We describe why it’s needed and how it works.

Cambridge’s Engagement with Africa
Pull-out map
For further information contact Ángel Gurría-Quintana ([email protected]), International Communications Officer, Office of External Affairs & Communications.