Water affairs experts Dr Muthoni Masinde
Supported by the department of science and technology’s Women in Science programme, Dr Muthoni Masinde and Dr Jane Catherine Ngila will be presenting important lectures at Scifest Africa that focus on different aspects of the unending water-related challenges that confront sub-Saharan Africa.
As part of this year’s celebration, Central University of Technology’s Masinde will present the lecture Downscaling Africa’s Drought Forecasts through integration of indigenous and scientific drought forecasts. In her lecture, Masinde will explore how indigenous knowledge and modern science weather forecasts can complement each other to produce more useful predictions for small-scale farmers in Africa than either manged to do separately. Her research uses information technology to harness indigenous knowledge, making weather predictions more accurate and more relevant in marginalised areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
While weather forecasting, and especially drought prediction, are important to all farmers, those who are farming marginalised lands in arid and semi-arid areas are finding it increasing difficult to predict the weather. Historically these farmers have relied on their indigenous knowledge of the environment, passed down from generation to generation, to know when to plant seeds, but the vagaries of climate change and ineffective large-scale weather forecasts have led to dangerous levels of unpredictability.
All too often in areas where farmers are most vulnerable to drought there aren’t any weather stations. This means that weather services publish information that is too coarse, covering areas of 100 to 200 square kilometres. The weather services also tend to predict that seasonal rainfall will be “above normal”, “below normal” or “normal” — information that lacks sufficient resolution to be useful to small farmers.
Through case studies in some of the most arid regions of Kenya, Masinde and her colleagues have developed a system dubbed ITIKI (Information Technology and Indigenous Knowledge with Intelligence), an Mbeere name for an indigenous bridge. The purpose of ITIKI is to integrate the most useful aspects of indigenous knowledge with modern meteorological forecasting. Masinde says the main challenge facing this integration is however the formal representation of highly structured and holistic indigenous knowledge. Through her lecture, she will demonstrate how the use of information communication technologies can address this challenge.
Retaining the focus on water, University of Johannesburg’s Dr Jane Catherine Ngila will present the lecture Why and How do we Manage Water Quality in South Africa? The country has a long history of droughts and is categorised among the water-stressed nations of the world. The lack of reliable water sources is serious, and even when there is enough, it is often not safe to drink.
In recent years, the government has made a concerted effort to ensure that everyone has access to safe drinking water. This is a legal requirement because South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that enshrines in its Constitution the basic right of all citizens to sufficient clean water. In spite of this significant progress, 10% of the population still does not have access to safe drinking water. Factors affecting water scarcity include: population growth; global climate change; industrial discharge into water systems; water supply misuse through illegal connections; collapsing dam structures in different parts of the country; and lack of smart water resource management.
Ngila and her team at the University of Johannesburg are working to address water treatment challenges, including the development and application of advanced technologies. These new developments include nanotechnology, which has great potential to improve the efficiency of water treatment processes.
Scifest Africa, which will take place from March 8-14 2017 in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, was established by the Grahamstown Foundation in 1996 to promote the public awareness, understanding and appreciation of science, technology and innovation in South Africa.
The festival promises a refreshing and educational experience for everyone so look out for the electronic programme available at www.scifest.org.za. Ticket bookings can be made at www.tickethut.co.za/scifes or for telephonic bookings contact 0860002004.