Science, Development and Africa

Africa is the oldest of the continents, the birthplace of civilisations, the storehouse of the earliest remains of humans and possesses the most wonderful works of humans. This is what Gardiner Hubbard wrote about Africa over a century ago in 1889. For ages, Africa has refused to reveal its secrets to the world although explorers had penetrated from every side of the continent (Hubbard, 1889). Africa remains an inadequately explored and studied continent. A great deal has been written and known about Africa but not much about science from Africa, or what Africa can give to science. Jan Hofmeyr, while serving as the President of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1929, asked questions which are still relevant today: What can Africa give to science? What can science give to Africa (Hofmeyr, 1929a)? One might add, what can science do for the development of the continent? In the words of Mohamed Hassan, who was once the president of the African Academy of Sciences: ‘Science alone cannot save Africa, but Africa without science cannot be saved’ (Hassan, 2001: 1609). Africa is a fruitful field for experiments and a place of expert scientific knowledge (Worthington, 1938). The continent once had some of the world’s best science departments in its universities. It made its quota of contributions to the solutions of some of the most fundamental problems of science (Worthington, 1938). The great challenge for the world’s scientific community, as Nobel laureate David Gross believes, is to connect Africa to the rest of the international scientific world. In a way, Gross was recognising the importance and relevance of African science and its significance for theworld of science and for its own development.