Strengths and positive trends of physics in intertropical Africa and necessity of mutually beneficial international collaboration
P. Woafo, Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Yaoundé I, Box 812, Yaoundé, Cameroon, pwoafo1@yahoo.fr or pwoafo@lamsebp.org
Intertropical Africa is the region between the tropic of cancer in the North and that of Capricorn in the South. It is constituted of several countries which had in the past suffered most from the European colonialism, slave trade from European and Arabic. Almost all the population are with black skin. Today, they have almost the highest population increase rate. This part of Africa is very rich in terms of minerals and other natural resources even if it does not benefit sufficiently on their exploitation.
Although those countries have been engaged in two different education systems, one from United Kingdom and one from France, the education in those countries has almost the same strengths and weaknesses, from the primary to the university levels (even if there are some very rare exceptions where the political will has engaged the education and research system in a good orientated move).
The education and research in a large number of countries in that region is increasing positively. Indeed, the population growth rate has also an impact on the number of students who are interested in doing physics. For instance, in a country like Cameroon, the number of students involved in physics education attains every year more that 2500 entering into the university system for the Bachelor program in physics. At the entrance to the Master level and PhD level, one can easily attain more than 50 students for each level for a single department. For instance, at the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon, 122 PhD students were admitted for the academic year 2022/2023 while 217 Master students were admitted. This is the case for one of the 10 universities offering Master and PhD programs in Physics. Even if Cameroon has a special high figure, an increasing tendency is observed in other countries. This increase of young people interested in doing Physics is an interesting strength which needs to be exploited.
Another important strength for physics in intertropical Africa is the increase in the number of scientific contributions in good refereed physics and engineering journals. This positive trend has had a good impact on the World ranking of intertropical African countries. Some of those countries are among the top-100 in physics outputs out of 243 countries in the World. From the Scimago journals and country ranks three years ago, there were the ranks occupied by some African countries in different fields of physics (the rank in the parenthesis).
- Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics: Nigeria (70), Cameroon (73), Ethiopia (87), Sudan (95)
- Condensed matter physics: Nigeria (69), Cameroon (82), Ethiopia (91), Sudan (95), Senegal (97)
- Statistical and Nonlinear Physics: Cameroon (54), Nigeria (65), Benin (78), Ethiopia (95), Bostwana (99), Senegal (100)
Twenty years ago, they were almost all after the top-100. Although in terms of the number of articles published yearly, the number for a country can be smaller to those of some individual research institutes in developed countries, a comparison considering the amount of funding will lead to the conclusion that African physicists are more performant.
The performance appearing in the ranking is the results of the existence of some isolated strong research teams whose research outputs are comparable to those of some research groups classified as good in developed countries. This is also an interesting strength which needs to be reinforced.
However, despite the positive attitude of the author of this article, there are many weaknesses that need to be mentioned and which hampered the development of physics and mostly its applications in that part of the continent. There are: (i) the limited practical training, (ii) the lack of industries to recruit physicists, (iii) the lack of official and national or continental research programmes in Physics (this limits the number of physicists recruited for universities and research institutes),(iv) the fact that more than 90 % of research activities are theoretical or not related to local problems, (v) the critical mass of physicists is not yet attained in most parts of those countries, (vi) the international collaboration between African physicists themselves and between African physicists and their col- leagues in extra African countries is very limited.
One of the main consequences of the weaknesses is the brain drain. From a World Bank report in 2014, about 40 000 Africans with PhD degrees are out of Africa among which the 2/3 trained in developed countries do not go back to their country of origin. A good proportion of some of those trained in Africa also move to foreign continents. Among these PhD holders, one counts various physicists. Another important consequence is that many holders of degree in Physics (Bachelor, Master and even PhD) are jobless in some countries.
So the strengths mentioned above need to be sustained or reinforced. And the weaknesses need to be managed. A very big issue.
In that direction, some rare physicists in Africa work hard to improve the situation by tirelessly contributing to the supervision of PhD thesis or to developing research topics for young physicists. This is the case of the author of this article who was able to supervise 75 PhD thesis in his group in Cameroon. Most of his former PhD students are lecturers, professors and researchers in Universities and research institutes in his country, in other African countries and in developed countries such as the United States of America. And some of them are very performant scientifically. Other actions undertaken by the author are the creation of a private centre to mitigate the lack of the practical training. The private centre Sci-Tech Services (www.sci-tech-services.com), created in 2013 has been the place for the promotion of experimental physics training high schools and university students in conducting experiments for their education, but also for their research projects. Moreover, the author has been behind several outreach activities for the promotion of physics such the Cameroon Physical Society, the students chapters club for the Optical Society of America (Optica), for the Institute for Electronic and electrical engineers, for the Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) which have served in the reinforcement of practical training. He was also one the founders of the African Physical Society.
But, these individual actions are not sufficient to efficiently enhance physics, specifically physics research in intertropical Africa. Parallel to individual countries efforts, more international actions are required to complement those already existing such as the important and long lasting support from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Trieste, Italy), the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and different scientific organizations. What we are proposing can be inserted in three actions.
Action 1: Development of international research programmes in Physics involving physicists in Africa and their colleagues in countries with more facilities. We have no doubt that with the eagerness of African youth for physics education and research, an international physics research programme involving physicists in Africa (working there) will highly en- hance the programme results.
Action 2: Creation of more international physics centres in Africa (public) not only for fundamental physics, but also for applied physics, capable of targeting development involving raw materials (minerals) exploited or to be exploited in Africa, and offering services to industries, not only in Africa, but also out of Africa. Those centres can stand alone, can support other initiatives in place in Africa such as the ICTP-East African Institute for Fundamental Research in Kigali, Rwandaor collaborate/support the existing research groups in Africa, or also initiatives such as that of a synchrotron infrastructure in Africa (africanlightsource.org).
Action 3: Parallel to the reinforcement through public centres, a more flexible action is the creation of private International Research Centres in Physics in Africa with the participation of physicists or physics research groups all over the World. Such centres will be beneficial for all. They can be founded by public institutions or by private donors. This action will be put in place with little constraints either through private research centres in Africa or through private higher education institutions in Africa. This action should be highly encouraged since it could attract private donors from abroad, but also from African countries. No doubt that all those actions will enhance the development of Physics in Africa, but also contribute to the development of physics and applications throughout the World.
Top