The Sunday Mail
Written by Sifelani Tsiko
From 2002 up to 2010, I ran a column mashing up a broad range of issues on science, environment and agriculture.
The column celebrated Zimbabwe and Africa’s achievements on its scientific innovations, debated and created dialogue on problems facing Zimbabwe and the entire continent on subjects under-reported in the mainstream media.
Readers will agree with me that politics has dominated Africa’s media landscape with little or no space for matters on science, environment and agriculture.
Politics enjoys front-centre limelight while issues that matter — health, environment, smallholder agriculture and scientific innovation — are sidelined.
Science, environment and agriculture are only given prominence when high-profile politicians speak on these issues and after that there is silence.
It becomes irritating to researchers in Zimbabwe and Africa when ideas and new innovations gather dust on shelves while our countries are hungry for solutions.
It’s even embarrassing when innovations by Africans are first reported in the international media before at home.
For the past decades there have been numerous breakthroughs by our own scientists that have hit the headlines on BBC, CNN, Reuters with little or nothing reported to celebrate our own here.
It’s time for us to change how we do things.
Science, environment and agricultural issues affect our lives. They may seem boring and dry, but they are life and death issues.
Science isn’t about authority, glamour and power, it’s about method.
That method, as renowned biochemist Professor Christopher Chetsanga once told me, is built on core principles — precision and transparency; being clear about your methods, being honest about your results and drawing a clear line between the results.
At another level, your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.
Changing mainstream media will be hard, but this column hopes to create parallel options to generate debate, dialogue and offer useful insights into how good science works as well as pulling bad science apart.
I have decided to call the column “Under the Baobab Tree” to capture the wisdom and knowledge around this iconic plant.
The baobab tree is a tree found in many parts of Africa. The Adansonia digitata is the stand-out star of the bush, widely acclaimed as Africa’s giant “upside-down” tree.
In the Zambezi Valley, the BaToga used its hollowed out trunk as a safe haven from menancing lions and other wild animals. In some cultures it has been used as a burial site, turning it into a sacred shrine.
The resilient and enduring tree is a symbol of community as a gathering place. This captures the philosophy behind the column.
The baobab is also incredibly useful and has so many functions that sustain our lives.
Its fruit has six times the vitamin C levels of an orange as well as vitamin A; twice the calcium of milk and is stuffed with antioxidants such as iron and potassium. It is said to be pro-biotic, good for digestion, brain and nerve functions!
In addition, there are so many stories and traditions surrounding the baobab.
Legend has it that the tree was lording over lesser plants and so this offended God who uprooted it and planted it again upside-down to stop its boasting.
So there you are.
This column is a humble attempt to unpack knowledge inside the tree of life, to detail the failures and achievements of science, environment and agriculture, to persuade reluctant researchers to tell their own stories and for tough-edged reporting.
And now to our first order of business: the opening the country’s first DNA testing centre is a major milestone that shows Zimbabwe has got talent to find solutions in the fight against sexual abuse as well as other criminal and civil matters.
Kudos to Prof Collins Masimirembwa of the the African Institute of Biomedical Science and Technology (AiBST), for his commitment to advancing science in Zimbabwe.
He is a recipient of a Presidential Award and opening a DNA Testing Centre with Wilkins Hospital is testimony of his dedication to science.
Another highlight: this year’s edition of the Research and Intellectual Expo-Science, Engineering and Technology (RIE-SET) Week starting September 3 at the University of Zimbabwe offered a unique opportunity for students and researchers to showcase their work.
RIE-SET Week, themed “Engagement, Innovation and Diversity for National Transformation and Development”, sought to recalibrate activities in the higher and tertiary education sector by proffering practical programmes and initiatives to ensure these institutions contribute to development.
The Zimbabwe Journal of Studies — journals for science and arts and humanities — were also launched.
There is no doubt that these journals will provide useful insights into what our researchers are doing to find solutions to some of the country’s pressing problems.
The 11th Scientific Conference and the 5th Quadrennial meeting of the East, Central and Southern Africa College of Nursing was held last week with Women’s University in Africa Vice- Chancellor Professor Hope Sadza challenging nurses and midwives to take an active interest in writing books and papers that document and analyse local disease patterns and conditions.
This, she says, will reduce the cost of importing texts and journals, and ensure relevance of information to the continent’s healthcare systems.
Having Africans tell their own story — be they nurses, journalists, environmentalists or scientists — will show that there is a whole untold story on this continent of one billion people.
In a 1994 interview in The Paris Review, Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer, spoke of “the danger of not having your own stories: “There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realised that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It’s not one man’s job. It’s not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail — the bravery even, of the lions.”
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