Foresight Africa Blog

Learning by touching: 3D printing for education

By Prof Henry Thairu Chair of the Commission for University Education, and Director of Consultancy Services, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.

Early this year, the BBC ran a headline story by the Director of the OECD’s Directorate of Education and Skills, Andreas Schleicher, titled ‘China opens a new university every week’. At this rate China is set to overtake the total number of graduates in the Western world and perhaps in the rest of the world.

Africa’s influence in climate change negotiations is weak!!  Insights from new research

By Joanes Atela, Claire Quinn, Albert Arhin, Lalisa Duguma and Kennedy Mbeva

Africa is mentioned in almost every climate change research and policy as the most vulnerable, the most exposed and the most affected continent by climate change.  Global solutions being proposed to tackle climate change whether though adaptation, mitigation, capacity building, financial support are strongly justified around addressing Africa’s vulnerabilities such as hunger, disasters and diseases among others.

From policy to implementation discourse: Transformations required to achieve clean and sustainable energy in Africa

By Dr. Joanes Atela, ACTS

Background

This week from 23rd-27th May, 2016, delegates drawn from across the world are gathered at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi  to participate in the second session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-2) to deliberate on the overarching theme ‘ ‘Delivering on the environmental dimension of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’’.

3D Printing and Africa's manufacturing renaissance

By Prof. Bitange Ndemo, Associate professor, University of Nairobi

“3D Printing has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.”  President Barack Obama

Did you know that in 1990 a novel project to manufacture motor vehicles in Kenya was abandoned due to the high cost of building five prototypes?

Biotechnology: The tool Africa cannot afford to ignore

By: Prof. Torbjörn Fagerström, Dr. Roy B. Mugiira and Prof. Lisa Sennerby Forsse a) Värtavägen 39, SE 115 29 Stockholm, Sweden, b) Directorate of Research Management and Development, State Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Nairobi, Republic of Kenya, c) Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Box 7070, Uppsala, S-750 07 Sweden.

Where does your waste go?

By Ms. Jully Senteu and Joel Onyango

Heaps of garbage and polybags scattered as far as the eye can see are regrettably a common sight in most urban and peri-urban centers across the country. It is disheartening, when you drive across a centre made up of less than a dozen shops yet there is so much plastic littered all over, you can barely spot a patch of green – or brown.

Harnessing trade for accelerated development in Africa

Think Mobility

By Prof. L Alan Winters - Professor of Economics, University of Sussex, also of CEPR, IZA and GDN

Mobility would seem to be the very essence of trade: if things don’t move, there is no trade. This is true, and it informs the parts of this article that talk about efforts to reduce the costs of doing international trade, including trade facilitation and aid for trade.

The poverty of development strategy in Africa

By Dr. Cosmas Ochieng, former Executive Director, ACTS

Abstract

A combination of robust economic performance and an uptick in scientific and technological indicators over the last two decades has given rise to exuberant assessments of Africa’s development prospects in the 21st century.

Africa New Middle Class

By Prof. Michael Lofchie, Department of Political Science, UCLA

A vehicle for progressive change or more of the same?

History offers sobering lessons for those concerned with the prospects of broad based development in Africa. Entrenched political oligarchies do not willingly surrender their power and privilege out of a benevolent concern for the wellbeing of the many because they fear that, if they do, they might erode the basis of their dominance.

Contact us

African Centre for Technology Studies
ICIPE Duduville Campus, Kasarani
P.O. Box 45917 - 00100
Nairobi, Kenya.
 
Tel: +254710607210 || +254737916566
 

 

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