Blog – Page 7 – Next Einstein Forum

August 9, 2018

Open-science hardware in the developing world

Walk into any modern physics laboratory and you’ll see all kinds of hi-tech instruments. There are spectrometers, microscopes, oscilloscopes and diffractometers all spitting out data, spectra and images. In the developing world it’s difficult to get and maintain the hi-tech equipment we associate with modern laboratories. But could open-science hardware provide a lifeline? And what […]

August 9, 2018

Big data is coming to agriculture. Farmers must set its course

The industrialization of agriculture began some 100 years ago. We are now witnessing its digitalization. But a wave of big data may sweep farmers off their land, unless they mark out a course in good time and decide which problems digital technologies should address. In the future, young farmers are likely to don digital glasses […]

August 4, 2018

How a 20-year old mobile technology protocol is revolutionizing Africa

Over the last few years, banks and other large companies have deployed their USSD applications at great cost due to the engineering effort and equipment required. Until very recently, individuals and small organizations could never even dream of building their own USSD apps. USSD stands for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data and supposedly it never got […]

August 3, 2018

Meet Salma Okonkwo, the brain behind Ghana’s biggest solar farm

For more than a decade, entrepreneur Salma in Ghana has been quietly building up a multimillion-dollar oil and gas outfit called UBI Group. Salma Okonkwo is a rare woman to head up an energy company in Africa. In her interview with Forbes, “I don’t stop when the door is being shut. I find a way to make it work,”. […]

July 18, 2018

Science will unlock Africa’s potential — if it is funded

Any good leader knows that scientific discovery and innovation fuel progress, facilitates development and can tackle issues such as food insecurity, water shortages and climate change. But most African governments are failing to fund research and development (R&D) adequately. According to the Unesco Institute for Statistics, countries in sub-Saharan Africa spend, on average, just 0.5% […]

July 18, 2018

Introducing the African Master’s of Machine Intelligence at AIMS

Over the past decade, thanks to large public and private investments, MI has progressed rapidly in both basic research and the development of a vast array of applications. However, the talent pool currently advancing MI is modest and unrepresentative of the diversity of our world, leaving us less capable of facing global challenges. The African […]

July 17, 2018

“Bio economy of the world regions – Africa”

The Bio economy summit which was open by the Anja Karliczek, Federal Minister of Education and Research, attracted participants from different parts of the world hailing from diverse walks of life such as science, civil society, policy and the business sector to Berlin under the theme “Innovation, Green growth and sustainable development”. The gathering created […]

July 13, 2018

To attract and retain women in tech, bias education is prerequisite

Western Washington University writes that the push for more women in tech has been a focus of many corporations, universities and even childhood programs for the past decade, yet the professional landscape of computer science shows it continues to be a man’s world. This trend isn’t just due to a lack of programs or resources for […]

June 27, 2018

African scientists call for more control of their continent’s genomic data

As the genomics revolution finally turns its attention to Africa and northern researchers flock there to collect data, scientists from the continent are demanding a larger role in projects. In recent years, researchers have begun sequencing the genomes of Africans in large numbers. The data offer insights into humanity’s past as well as predisposition to […]

June 27, 2018

Des formations en intelligence artificielle émergent en Afrique, mais ce n’est pas suffisant

“Il faut une volonté étatique, une implication majeure des Etats, une compréhension que la recherche fait partie de l’investissement des pays et qu’une partie doit être consacrée à faire décoller les universités et permettre à plusieurs chercheurs en sciences des données et en IA, qui sont basés un peu partout dans le monde, de revenir sur le continent pour faire de la recherche […]