From ZAMP Bionews…

Leaders of several African science academies are meeting next week at the Royal Society, the national science academy of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, to discuss how the independent, expert advice of science academies can be applied to policy and development issues in Africa. The gathering is the fourth annual conference of the African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI), a multiyear effort administered by the U.S. National Academies to strengthen the capacity of African academies to deliver such advice.

Here is the conference agenda for those interested in more detail.

Definitely an initiative to watch.

I just became aware of the Google Zawadi Africa Scholarship, a program established to encourage African women to pursue careers in computer science and technology.  (HT Advance-Africa.com)

Google is partnering with the Zawadi Africa Educational Fund to grant five Kenyan women full scholarships to complete degrees in computer science, computer engineering and/or ICT. The Google Zawadi Scholars will pursue studies at top universities in Kenya and South Africa, and they’ll each have the support of a Google engineering mentor. Selection criteria include excellent academics, extracurricular involvement, leadership potential and financial need.

Contact Information and Application are available here.

Yesterday South Africa’s International Science, Innovation, and Technology Exhibition (INSITE 08) kicked off in Johannesburg.  This three-day event (Sept. 15 -17) is meant to showcase the role of science, technology, and innovation as key drivers of economic growth and development and for the enhancement of the quality of life.

While the exhibitions are global, the benefits of the event are local.  Exhibitors display “progressive solutions for the world’s critical problems, demonstrating the practical application of innovation, science and technology…[They] help to create a vision of what the future may hold and highlight ways to help solve global crises by focusing on issues such as renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions…This meeting of minds is essential if South Africa is to develop a competitive, sustainable, fast-growing economy. Knowledge, innovation and productivity are key to building a firm competitive industrial base in South Africa.” (via Mail & Guardian Online)

CHARGED Southern Africa posted a guide to the tech-centered world travel today.  It captures the places around the world any technology junkie should visit including Bangalore, Tokyo, and London.  Given their base in South Africa, they also highlight the many science centers and technology museums to visit in their home country.  Of particular note is MTN’s ScienCentre at Canal Walk Century City in Cape Town.

[It has been] dubbed the country’s ”first world-class interactive science centre”, with over 280 displays as well as an auditorium, camera obscura, computer rooms, laboratories, and exhibition hall.

The MTN ScienCentre’s Winter Holiday Programme is — or so we’re told — ”packed and everyone, from Chocolicious Play Dough to Forensics, Science Shows, Bath Goo and a three-day Digi-Photo course”. For these and other events, see www.mtnsciencentre.org.za.

From the TED Blog…

Each year, untold numbers of bright young Africans — doctors and nurses, scientists and programmers — leave their home countries to live and work abroad. This continental “brain drain” has the predictable effect:

Many experts believe the flight of health workers, scientists, and teachers hinder the continent’s development. “It will be impossible to achieve an African renaissance without the contributions of the talented Africans residing outside Africa,” writes Ravinder Rena of the Eritrea Institute of Technology. ….

But a new report from the Council on Foreign Relations, titled “Is Brain Drain Good for Africa?”, suggests two upsides. First, it points out that remittances — the money that expatriate workers send home to their families — have become a meaningful part of some African economies:

A March 2008 paper by economists William Easterly and Yaw Nyarko says remittances to Africa are likely undercounted, but on average they are equivalent to 81 percent of the foreign aid (PDF) received by an individual country.

And second, the report suggests that a significant number of expatriates eventually return home to work, envigorated by exposure to global markets and ideas, and often charged with a mission to improve the lives of their compatriots. (Sociologist Rubin Patterson calls this phenomenon “brain circulation.”) Several TEDTalks speakers are examples of this — like Patrick Awuah, pictured above, who left Seattle (and a career at Microsoft) to found the first liberal arts university in his native Ghana. Watch Patrick Awuah’s TEDTalk >>

Ideally, the efforts of these returning expatriates will help African states to, eventually, nurture and keep homegrown talent. Earlier this year, 2008 TED Prize winner Neil Turok spoke with CFR’s writer on one way to stop the brain drain: by promoting math and science education throughout Africa. Listen to the podcast interview >>

Last year, NOVA profiled mathematician and cosmologist Arlie Petters, who, like Neil Turok, is bringing high quality math and science education to those who previously had no such opportunities.

Originally from a rural town in Belize, Dr. Petters grew up to become a leading figure in the field of gravitational lensing, the study of how light is “bent” by space and time.  The first African-American tenured faculty member in the Mathematics and Science department at Duke University, his is not just a story of achievement in science but of dedication to his own dreams and to those of his country of birth.

Dr. Petters immigrated to the US while in high school.  It was at this time that he turned his interest in the stars into an academic passion.  Now he is woking to help others children in Belize much like himself do the same.  In 2005, Dr. Petters opened the Petters Research Institute to train Belizean children in math and science.  The institute fosters national development through entrepreneurship in these fields. His vision for the country is to create economic growth through high-technology industries that draw on Belizean intellectual capital.  He has also worked on the math and science curriculum for the whole country which has expanded his reach even beyond the Institute.

Nubiah Cheetah posted today about the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa.  With research areas including biosciences, laser technology, and space technology, the CSIR is committed to supporting innovation in South Africa to improve national competitiveness in the global economy.

Definitely worth checking out.

Recently I wrote about the benefit for scientists of sharing their scholarly work and the difficulties posed by the current system of scientific databases.  Today I learned about a new open source effort for scientists to share their work, WorldWideScience.org. (via Gray Area)

WorldWideScience is…’a global science gateway connecting you to national and international scientific databases. It hopes to ‘accelerate scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of global science sources’…

A blog on the OSTI site provides some background: ‘The dilemma is that no single scientist can be expected to be aware of the hundreds of high-quality STI sources on the web. Moreover, even if a person were aware of all of these sources, he or she simply wouldn’t have the time to search them one-by-one to find the scientific knowledge that will help accelerate his or her own efforts…’

The answer proved to be the creation of federated searching and precision relevance ranking technology to provide a single gateway to a number of national science databases.

The NextEinstein Initiative is currently recruiting a CEO.  Applications are due before September 31st.

Here is an overview of NEI and the CEO position requirements:

The Next Einstein Initiative (NEI) is building a network of postgraduate centres of excellence for teaching and research in the mathematical sciences, throughout Africa, building on the proven success of the prototype African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape Town, South Africa. The network of AIMS Centres will operate as a single, coherent, pan-African institution, performing the following tasks: recruiting outstanding African graduates and international lecturers; teaching broadly applicable problem-solving skills and fostering innovative thinking; enabling its graduates to pursue successful careers in education, science, technology, business and government, in Africa, and thereby building a pan-African high-skills community which can make a major contribution to Africa’s future economic and political self-sufficiency. By recruiting and developing scientific talent in Africa, NEI aims to discover people of rare creative genius, capable of revolutionary advances in various fields of human endeavour. By adding entrepreneurship and leadership skills to the curriculum, NEI aims to stimulate wealth creation. As well as the Next Einstein, we hope to discover the Next Gates, Brin and Page, in Africa.

NEI is now recruiting a Chief Executive Officer, to manage all aspects of the development and implementation of the NEI programme. The successful applicant will: be strongly committed to African development and the NEI goals; be a highly knowledgeable project manager preferably with an MBA and/or business building experience; possess significant experience in planning, developing and managing large partnership projects; be an outstanding project and staff manager with a track record of timely implementation; preferably have good academic/scientific knowledge; be fluent in English with a strong command of French; be an intelligent, well-organised, responsible and highly responsive individual with excellent interpersonal skills.

Download the job description for more details.