Kenyan scientists change tack in creating awareness about results

There is a silent revolution in Kenya’s research arena as scientists devise creative means to get their work incorporated into policymaking and recognised by the public.

From photography, online conferences and media roundtables, scientists are straddling their technical work and communication to get the public and policymakers appreciate their work.

On the Twitter handle of veterinarian @mathewmuturi are pictures of little boys with their dogs that have just been vaccinated against rabies with the caption “vaccinate and chill”.

Then there was a Twitter conference about anti-microbial resistance and animal welfare in development, among other subjects.

Despite Kenyan scientists’ trailblazing research in the continent, little of the published work is considered in policymaking locally.

According to the Unesco Science Report, Africa accounts for less than two per cent of the global scientific knowledge.

There are only 79 scientists per one million people in Africa, far cry from the global minimum of 800 per a million.

In areas such as Europe the number is as high as 4,000 per million.

Be that as it may Kenya is the third in the continent — after South Africa and Nigeria — in terms of research papers produced, with more than half being on biomedical sciences and health issues.

Kenya hosts some of Africa’s respected research institutions: Kenya Medical Research Institution and International Livestock Research Institute, among others.

Dr Thomas Kariuki, the director of African Academy of Sciences (AAS) — a Kenya-based pan African outfit that supports more than 2,000 scientists in Africa — attributed this gaping chasm between research and public good to many things.

“It starts with education,” he says. “Every time children finish school and they are asked what they want to be they are likely lean on science but still there are few students taking the science, technology, engineering and maths courses”

Once they graduate, he says, scientists are poorly paid so they choose to work abroad.

To address this problem veteran scientists affiliated to organisations such as the AAS have set up programmes to support younger scientists in form of cash grants as well as mentorship, for example, the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa, and Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science (DELTAS Africa) with funding as much as $100 million.

In these programmes, Dr Kariuki says, scientists are taught to communicate their work.

“The scientist should not include the policymaker at the end, but from the beginning of the research,” he says.