Mehkurydiaries

The Science Summit opens in Nairobi today with a serious ambition: to place African scientific leadership at the heart of the global agenda. Africa has never lacked questions. It has lacked sustained control over which questions receive money. UNESCO’s latest data puts research and development spending in Sub-Saharan Africa at 0.38 percent of GDP. The global figure is 1.92 percent. That gap is not merely a budget problem. It is a power arrangement. The person funding a question often influences which problem becomes scientifically visible. When the topic, method, timetable and expected result arrive inside the grant call, the local researcher can become a field assistant in his own continent. We export samples and import conclusions. A microscope does not become African because it cleared customs. This is not an argument against international collaboration. Science grows by crossing borders. Isolation would be expensive foolishness wearing a sovereignty badge. But collabora...