Nature: Science in Africa – View from the Frontline
Kenya: In search of talent
Kenyan science is a study in contrasts. Among sub-Saharan nations, it ranks third — behind South Africa and Nigeria — in its output of scientific papers published in international journals, and its publishing outranks that of economic heavyweight Nigeria in fields such as environment, ecology and immunology. It is also a hub of collaborations on the continent (see ‘Country connections’). But Kenya’s research output has grown more slowly than most other sub-Saharan nations. In the recent African Union survey, Kenya scored last in terms of the increase in the numbers of published research papers, normalized for population size.
Most of the scientific work in Kenya is centred in government-owned research institutes that have extensive international collaborations. Among the most renowned is the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), which has centres around the country and does basic research as well as developing drugs, vaccines and products such as diagnostic kits for HIV — an important service because Kenya lacks a thriving private sector for commercialization of research. KEMRI has a budget of $37.5 million, with 45% coming from its international collaborators, including the Wellcome Trust, a London-based medical research charity.
Other centres also stand out, such as the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, headquartered in Nairobi, which has an international reputation for its work on crops and agricultural diseases. And the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, headquartered in Mombasa, has a programme focused on mangrove research that is considered the best in sub-Saharan Africa.
By contrast, the universities suffer from lack of infrastructure and money. The government and donors have focused on boosting primary and secondary education, but have neglected universities, say observers.
The government invested only $3.6 million in 2010 on university-based research, according to Shaukat Abdulrazak, secretary of the National Council for Science and Technology. And there is a shortage of professors to serve a student population that grew from 90,000 in 2004 to more than 120,000 in 2008.
Nature: The Wheat Stalker
Njoro, Kenya (Jun 30, 2011) — David Cheruiyot noticed that his wheat fields were turning the wrong colour. The stems of the plants took on a sickly brown hue, and when he peeled open the heads there was no grain inside. “If you go to inspect it, there is nothing but dust,” he recalls.
Ug99, a virulent fungus that causes a disease called stem rust, arrived on Cheruiyot’s farm in Kenya in 2007. It devastated wheat fields in the country that season, slashing yields by as much as 80% in some regions. Since that epidemic, Cheruiyot has sprayed his wheat three times a season with fungicide, something that few farmers in Africa can afford.
Online collection.
Stem rust has plagued farmers for millennia, but Ug99 is a new superstrain that overcomes defensive genes in 90% of the wheat crops planted around the globe. Since it was first detected in 1998, spores of the fungus have spread from East Africa into Yemen and Iran. If the disease continues its march eastwards, hitting the breadbaskets of south Asia and China, it will threaten the food supply of hundreds of millions of people.
Better biosurveillance could halt disease spread
Joined-up approach would have helped in German E. coli outbreak.
Germany is still recovering from one of the world’s worst outbreaks of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli, which as of 18 June had sickened more than 3,200 people and caused 39 deaths1. The unusually deadly bacteria moved undetected through the food supply from livestock to agriculture to the dinner table, and the response to the outbreak was branded slow and inefficient by physicians and scientists (see ‘Microbe outbreak panics Europe‘).
Now a group of health professionals assembled by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, has called for biosurveillance efforts in the United States and worldwide to be streamlined to help recognize and respond to threats quickly.
“We are trying to create an international immune system, a system that has the capacity to recognize abnormalities,” says Ian Lipkin, co-chair of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS) and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, New York.
A last push to eradicate polio
Funding gap persists as agencies and organizations attempt to wipe out the tenacious virus.
Some 99% of wild poliovirus has been eradicated, but it clings on in a few places. The last endemic hot spots are the conflict-ridden front lines of Pakistan and Afghanistan, areas of India and Nigeria — and governments and charities are scrambling to eliminate it entirely.
Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquartered in Seattle, Washington, announced in his annual letter yesterday his commitment to eradicate polio by 2012, by giving the vaccine to all children under five in poor countries. The initiative is led by the Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which includes among other organizations Rotary International, a non-profit foundation headquartered in Evanston, Illinois.
Nature examines the challenges that remain before the virus can be wiped out.
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Climate Change May Make Plants More Fragrant
A warming climate could lead to a more fragrant world, but it might disturb an intricate communication system used by plants, according to a review published recently in Trends in Plant Science.
When Jarmo Holopainen grew white cabbages in a greenhouse in Finland, he found that over many years of sunlight and elevated levels of carbon dioxide, the plants’ communication with the world was altered.
Cabbages and most vegetation emit chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds, or BVOCs, that are mostly undetectable by humans. But they notify other organisms of danger and opportunity, and also function as methods of plant-plant communication. When we can smell them, they manifest as fragrances.