Location: Africa

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Surgeons in Zambia completed the country’s first total aortic arch replacement – guided by a team from University of Michigan Health. Zambia, a country of around 20 million people, has fewer than 10 cardiac specialists in both the government and private sector. Cardiovascular disease is the nation’s second leading cause of death.

• share
• favorite_border

Stigma affects all aspects of epilepsy care. It affects the lives of people with epilepsy when they are not given equal access to education, employment, and social opportunities. In a US study, one-third of respondents identified stigma—not seizures—as the most difficult part of living with epilepsy.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers are helping women entrepreneurs in Uganda grow small businesses by investing in energy-efficient technology. Helping the women invest in energy-efficient equipment and appliances could benefit them and their communities as well as reduce their business’s carbon footprint.

• share
• favorite_border

Using rigorous and detailed collection methods, a University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led research team was able to place the remains of fossil apes, such as Morotopithecus, within detailed habitat reconstructions.

• share
• favorite_border

The disastrous flood that hit Durban in April 2022 was the most catastrophic natural disaster yet recorded in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in collective terms of lives lost, homes and infrastructure damaged or destroyed and economic impact.

• share
• favorite_border

Pests and diseases may reduce global wheat yields by over 20%. A study published April 11th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Sergio Latorre at University College London, UK and colleagues suggest that genomic surveillance may be an effective disease management tool with the ability to trace lineages of emerging crop diseases, and to identify genetic traits for breeding disease-resistant lines.

• share
• favorite_border

The Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) is a sustainable development and economic progress metric that transcends the conventional means of measuring a nation’s prosperity.

• share
• favorite_border

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has recognized physicist and humanitarian Sekazi Mtingwa for his invaluable work in the field of intrabeam scattering and particle accelerator research as well as his tireless efforts to promote accessibility, diversity, and equity in STEM. Mtingwa’s career and achievements exemplified the theme of this year’s meeting? “Science for Humanity.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The largest-yet analysis of ancient DNA in Africa, which includes the first ancient DNA recovered from members of the medieval Swahili civilization, has now broken the stalemate about the extent to which people from outside Africa contributed to Swahili culture and ancestry.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of MIT researchers has come up with a kind of tiny, biodegradable tag that can be applied directly to the seeds themselves, and that provides a unique randomly created code that cannot be duplicated.

• share
• favorite_border

AIP has selected Mahouton Norbert Hounkonnou as the winner of the 2023 John Torrence Tate Medal for International Leadership in Physics. The award committee selected Hounkonnou “for leadership in building and maintaining an enduring transnational African mathematical physics research and education community, in particular the COPROMAPH conferences and schools and Academy level international networks.” The award includes a certificate of recognition, bronze medal, and $10,000 prize and Hounkonnou will be presented with the medal during an upcoming physical sciences community event.

• share
• favorite_border

A first-of-its-kind study in the March 2023 issue of JNCCN highlights how the lack of genomic research for people with African ancestry, particularly those from the Sub-Saharan region, is hampering efforts to reduce disparities for people with advanced prostate cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

New research led by the University of Delaware shows transnational agricultural large-scale land acquisitions (TALSLAs), and the forest loss associated with them, pose a threat to biodiversity in the Global South — broadly defined as the nations of the world with low levels of economic and industrial development that are typically located to the south of more industrialized nations.

• share
• favorite_border

Using a new dataset, Rafael Prieto-Curiel of the Complexity Science Hub and colleagues analyzed the coordinates and surface of 183 million buildings in nearly 6,000 cities across all 52 countries in Africa.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Endangered great apes get malaria, just like humans. New evidence from wild bonobos shows us the infection harms them, too.

• share
• favorite_border

UMD Smith's Lemma Senbet, an advisor to the G20 Compact with Africa, describes the impetus and economic implications of South Africa joining a 10-day naval exercise with Russia and China.

• share
• favorite_border

Figshare has formed a new partnership with the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA), which is committed to open data and information sharing across Africa.

• share
• favorite_border

More than 1.1 million African American men are imprisoned in the U.S., and about 500,000 are fathers. Many of their fathers also served time in jail or prison, and many of their children will as well. A new study illustrates how incarceration is a destructive force in the African American community, especially for fathers. Researchers mined the feelings, perceptions and experiences of formerly imprisoned African American men to identify how incarceration has impacted their relationships with their fathers and sons; their definitions of fatherhood; and their perceived roles within families, communities and society.

• share
• favorite_border

A recent study performed in Zambia by University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMSOM) Institute of Human Virology researchers found that high uptake of HIV preventative medicine, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), is possible in prison populations with adequate resources and support from the criminal justice health system.

• share
• favorite_border

Based on data that span the past 120 years, scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have found that the mosquitoes responsible for transmitting malaria in Africa are spreading deeper into southern Africa and to higher elevations than previously recorded. The researchers estimate that Anopheles mosquito populations in sub-Saharan Africa have gained an average of 6.5 meters (21 feet) of elevation per year, and the southern limits of their ranges moved south of the equator by 4.7 kilometers (nearly 3 miles) per year.

• share
• favorite_border

Along the shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research led by scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Queens College, CUNY, as well as the National Museums of Kenya, Liverpool John Moores University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

• share
• favorite_border

Replacing traditional biomass-burning cookstoves across sub-Saharan Africa could save more than 463,000 lives and US $66 billion in health costs annually, according to a new analysis of the most socially optimal cooking technologies in Africa.

• share
• favorite_border

The EU regularly exports large quantities of poultry meat to West African countries. These exports have been criticized for harming importing countries in West Africa and exacerbating poverty there.

• share
• favorite_border

Half a million lives could be saved each year in sub-Saharan Africa by taking action to reduce reliance on traditional wood- and charcoal-burning stoves, a new study shows.

• share
• favorite_border

A $50 million gift from Woburn, Mass.-based Cummings Foundation will build upon and amplify the work of the late Paul Farmer, a champion of global health. The gift establishes the Paul Farmer Collaborative of Harvard Medical School and the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda. It will be divided equally between the two institutions.

• share
• favorite_border

A three-dose regimen of a whole-parasite vaccine against malaria – called Plasmodium falciparum sporozoite (PfSPZ) vaccine – demonstrated safety and efficacy when tested in adults living in Burkina Faso, West Africa, which has endemic malaria.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of researchers has mapped out the values and benefits of elephants to help overcome conservation challenges and conflict.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

First discovered a year ago in South Africa, the SARS-CoV-2 variant later dubbed “Omicron” spread across the globe at incredible speed.

• share
• favorite_border

Penn Medicine experts have worked with local partners to improve health care in Botswana for years. Now, a new $3.5 million grant from the NCI will help further that work by addressing one of Botswana’s most serious health challenges: cervical cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

The island of Madagascar—one of the last large land masses colonized by humans—sits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) off the coast of East Africa.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Markings on ivory seized in Uganda in 2019 suggested that the tusks may have been taken from a stockpile of ivory kept, it was thought, strictly under lock and key by the government of Burundi.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Three distinct phases of climate variability in eastern Africa coincided with shifts in hominin evolution and dispersal over the last 620,000 years, an analysis of environmental proxies from a lake sediment record has revealed.