The Next Einstein Forum ends in Dakar

Scientists and inventors in Africa are leaving nothing to chance in their quest to improve upon the livelihood of people on the continent.

Although science and technology appear not to be highly patronized at the tertiary level of education across the continent, there are some young Africans who are developing their own technologies.

Some of the continent’s young science and technology talents, this week participated in the continent’s first science forum dubbed the Next Einstein Forum. The event held in the Senegalese capital Dakar, was attended by some 800 scientists from across the world.

The 3-day event was aimed at among others encouraging African researchers to go the extra mile as well as whip up the interest of the continent’s youth in science and technology.

Senegal’s president Macky Sall noted that Africa has all the resources it needs to develop but what it lacked was the needed human resource. He thus suggested that “we need to train executives, women and the youth. We will also have to enhance the extraordinary African solar potential or hydraulic energy. All the resources we need for this development are available for the African people.”

MUST READ: A new forum hopes to bring Africa’s scientific researchers together – via economist #NEF2016 pic.twitter.com/9o4IMi5IoM

— Next Einstein Forum (NextEinsteinFor) March 11, 2016

15 young African scientists working in various fields including theoretical physics, computer science, epidemiology among others were honoured at the event.

Cameroonian scientist Axelle Ngonga, one of the 15 honoured at the event said he hopes to use his work to make communication between humans and machines easier.

“My goal is to bring IT systems to talk to people and help them as they try to get some results. For example, in biomedicine, the basic idea is that human beings are able to ask machines complex questions and that the machines are also able to give their responses based on more data found on internet,” he said.

Kenyan cellular immunologist, Evelyn Gitau is also a Next Einstein Forum Laureate.

“We’re doing research where we’re trying to discover a diagnostic test that you can use to identify many infections at the same time and to use a very small spot of blood so we have some potential bio markers about 20 bio markers. I am interested in children who are malnourished because they get many infections. You sometimes can’t take a lot of blood from a child who is malnourished because they are very ill and their amount of blood is very little,” she said about her work.

Participants who attended the forum believe science, technology and mathematics tailored to serve the community can go a long way to help address the challenges plaguing the continent.

And it's a wrap. Thank you from the NEF Ambassadors! NextEinsteinFor AIMS_Next #NEF2016 #AfricasEinsteins pic.twitter.com/58jR0XM3pE

— Gameli Adzaho (@gamelmag) March 10, 2016

The Rwandan capital, Kigali will host the next edition of the Next Einstein Forum.