Innovative Cape Town research has provided valuable insights into why poor, unemployed people don’t turn to entrepreneurship — and another survey will be under way later this year to try to untangle this little-understood part of the economy.
Bonisiwe Maphumulo sits on a straight-backed chair in the sun outside her thatched, one-room home in rural Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal. What she says next is, most probably, a lie. ”I don’t know what sickness I’ve got,” the 51-year-old widow observes in Zulu, cradling her young granddaughter on her lap.
As the deadly outbreak of Marburg virus continues to claim lives in Angola, researchers have worked out how the closely related Ebola virus invades human cells, according to a report on the Science and Development Network website. The findings could lead to a treatment for the diseases, which each kill up to 90% of those infected.
When a small piece of South African history was made recently in the coastal city of Cape Town, it looked as if the boys would have the last laugh. ”Girls can’t play! Girls can’t play!” several onlookers roared after every goal. But by the end of the game on Rocklands sports field the smirks were gone.
For one week, a historic university town in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province reverberated with some unlikely noises: the sound of rockets igniting, robots chirping and home-made cars racing. Most of all, though, it was the voices of thousands of pupils racing between venues that reminded Grahamstown locals that Sasol SciFest was under way.
Talk is cheap, but carrying out the promises you make less so. That being the case, has all the talk about ensuring equality between men and women in South Africa resulted in action where it counts most: the allocation of funds along gender lines in the national budget? Nearly a decade ago, the Ministry of Finance promised to provide a breakdown of ways in which the budget promoted gender equality.
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/ 16 February 2005
The Academy of Science of South Africa has been chosen to receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The science academies of Nigeria and Uganda have also received funding. The funding will help boost the academies’ ability to provide African governments and the public with advice on science-related issues.
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/ 7 February 2005
This is the time of year when the recurring issues of academic and financial exclusions at higher education institutions surface. This has seen some students given access and others not; and where difficult choices are made between equally pressing priorities. All this has to be done while the playing fields remain uneven.
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/ 7 February 2005
Gordon Conway, the newly appointed chief scientist at the United Kingdom Department for International Development, has used his first public speech to call on scientists to listen to the world’s poor. Conway said it is imperative that development agencies such as his own listen closely to the demands of the poorest in developing countries — and not only to scientists and politicians there.
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/ 3 February 2005
The theory that humans have evolved over millions of years independent of any "divine" influence is not widely accepted in many countries. That list now includes Brazil, according to the Science and Development Network. Meanwhile, evolutionary facts underpin many of the events coming up at Africa’s largest science festival, the ninth annual Sasol Science Festival in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape.