They celebrate the champions of inclusion in science

South Africa meets the international community: Two new hominin species, one big bang and two big things: warnings on the future of science in South Africa

If you look at the publications of researchers in South Africa relative to their international counterparts, I think we are doing fairly well.

South Africa has a number of landmark scientific achievements. In 2021, a team of researchers in South Africa and Botswana alerted the world to the new SARS-CoV-2 variant, Omicron. South Africa has two new hominin species that have been unveiled in the last five years.

Azwinndini Muronga is dean of science at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, South Africa and she says that the university is increasingly relying on international collaborations. “If one was to cut that lifeline, we probably would be in a very dire situation.”

Xenophobia “is targeting our top scientists, particularly [those] from the African continent”, says Jonathan Jansen, an education researcher at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and former president of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAF), based in Pretoria.

Source: ‘Stop the xenophobia’ — South African researchers sound alarm on eve of election

MeerKAT and the South African Scientific Landscape: What is needed of a desperately poor population? The role of education, human rights, and scientific innovation in South Africa

Since 2018, its 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope has been capturing the Universe in unprecedented detail, including the chaotic region around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The country is home to the Square Kilometre Array telescope. The heart of the SKA will be formed by MeerKAT.

The education system is trying to keep young people in it. Statistics South Africa found that nearly 10% of 17-year-olds had dropped out of school by the year 2021. 50% to 60% of students drop out of university after the first year of an undergraduate course, according to some estimates.

Four out of five ten-year-olds in South African schools are unable to understand what they read, according to the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study.

Nature spoke to people who said that universities were struggling to attract and retain talent. Basic education is the problem, they say.

The most recent period for which data are available, from 2020–21, shows that spending by the public and private sectors on R&D has fallen over the past year. That accounts for less than 1% of GDP, and less than half the government’s target of 1.5% by 2030.

The ANC has historical strengths in optical astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, clinical medicine, mining and nuclear technology. R&D was a strength.

Before the party took power, the majority Black population was overwhelmingly excluded from the 22,000-strong scientific community, according to 1991–92 data. That has since changed.

Human Rights Watch warned political parties to be cautious with their rhetoric which could lead to more violence. At the ASSAF round table last year there were confrontations between Black African university staff and students who are not from South Africa.

Science isn’t talked about or debated in politics in South Africa. We will talk about what people need who are desperately poor.

The country’s GDP per capita has been declining over the past decade, falling from $11,737 in 2011 to $6,776 in 2023. Last year, according to World Bank data, more than 60% of people lived in poverty — defined as those earning below $6.85 a day, the poverty line for upper-middle-income countries. The unemployment rate for adults is one in three. Frequent power cuts are needed because of a 17-year-long energy crisis.

Source: ‘Stop the xenophobia’ — South African researchers sound alarm on eve of election

The Changemakers Project: Stories from the First 12 Years of Science in South Africa (with an Emphasis on the First Prize Winner, Freeman Hrabowski)

The ANC has ruled South Africa since 1994 when Nelson Madiba became the country’s first elected president.

This week sees the launch of a new — and new kind of — series of articles. ‘Changemakers’ will appear in Nature’s Careers section, periodically featuring researchers who have championed and led initiatives aimed at dismantling systemic racism, gender bias and other forms of discrimination in science. Researchers will describe their experiences in their own words, which we will publish in an edited Q&A format.

The articles will highlight the success of scholars who have worked day and night to make the culture of science more inclusive for people of all perspectives. The articles are supposed to celebrate positive change. This is what makes these articles different.

Our inaugural Changemaker, Freeman Hrabowski, exemplifies the spirit of the series. Hrabowski was previously the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. There is an important place for UMBC in US higher education. It was the first public university in Maryland to cater to all races.

The Meyerhoff Scholars Program was created by Hrabowski. The Meyerhoffs donated US$500,000 to establish the foundation in 1988 to help prepare African American students for scientific careers. From that initial instalment, the scheme has boosted the numbers of Black science students in the United States. 500 people have gone on to pursue PhDs after graduating from it. Its success has been replicated at other universities across the country.

Hrabowski’s own path has been anything but smooth. He recalls as a child sitting in the audience at a church, hearing Martin Luther King Jr say that it would take an open mind to allow our children to go to better schools. In 1963, aged just 12, Hrabowski was jailed for a week for marching with other children in an anti-segregation protest. Hrabowski remembers being the only Black kid in the classes and only one woman at the University of Illinois in the early 1970s. I wanted other people to see that people of all ethnicities could excel, so I knew I wanted to change that.

Such accounts of facing injustice and then constantly having to fight it will feature repeatedly in the series. It is possible that they are uncomfortable to read. But such experiences are still much too widespread, and need to be highlighted until the day comes when they become history.

Alongside the Changemakers series, this journal’s commitment to reporting on these issues will continue. We hope that the series will inspire other researchers, and also the leaders of their research teams, departments and institutions, to make their workplaces kinder and more inclusive.

Nature holds the Changemakers and their work in the highest regard. Their work should not be seen as ‘extracurricular outreach’ or ‘diversity work’, but rather as integral to what makes scientific inquiry successful and what advances discoveries, inventions and innovations. Science and society will benefit from doors being opened to more creative minds.