̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Alborada Trust

Cost and scale of field trials for bovine TB vaccine may make them unfeasible

cjb250 — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 10:50:07 +0000

Instead, the researchers suggest that the scale and cost of estimating the effect of a vaccine on transmission could be dramatically reduced by using smaller, less expensive experiments in controlled settings – using as few as 200 animals.

Bovine TB is an infectious disease that affects livestock and wildlife in many parts of the world. In the UK, it is largely spread between infected cattle; badgers are also involved, transmitting to and receiving infection from cattle. Culls to keep badger populations small and reduce the likelihood of infecting cattle have proven controversial both with the public and among scientists.

̽��ֱ��UK has a policy of ‘test and slaughter’ using the tuberculin test and slaughter of infected animals. A vaccine (BCG) exists, but can cause some vaccinated cattle to test positive falsely. As such, the vaccine is currently illegal in Europe. Researchers are trying to develop a so-called ‘DIVA test’ (‘Differentiates Infected from Vaccinated Animals’) that minimises the number of false positives, but none are yet licensed for use in the UK.

̽��ֱ��European Union has said it would consider relaxing its laws against bovine TB vaccination if the UK government were able to prove that a vaccine is effective on farms. Any field trials would need to follow requirements set by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

In research published today, a team of researchers led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has shown using mathematical modelling that satisfying two key EFSA requirements would have profound implications for the likely benefits and necessary scale of any field trials.

̽��ֱ��first of these requirements is that vaccination must be used only as a supplement, rather than replacement, to the existing test-and-slaughter policy. But use of vaccination as a supplement means that a successful vaccine which reduces the overall burden and transmission of disease may nonetheless provide only limited benefit for farmers – false positives could still result in animals being slaughtered and restrictions being placed on a farm.

̽��ֱ��second of the EFSA requirements is that field trials must demonstrate the impact of vaccination on transmission rather than just protecting individual animals.

̽��ֱ��team’s models suggest that a three year trial with 100 herds should provide sufficient to demonstrate that vaccination protects individual cattle. Such a trial would be viable within the UK. However, demonstrating the impact on vaccination on transmission would be almost impossible because the spread of bovine TB in the UK is slow and unpredictable.

If BCG were to be licensed for use in cattle in the UK, vaccination would be at the discretion of individual farmers. Farmers would have to bear the costs of vaccination and testing, as well as the period of time under restrictions if animals test positive. This means that they would be less interested in the benefit to individual cattle and more interested in the benefits at the herd level. Herd immunity is such that, even if the vaccine is not 100% effective in every individual animal, the vaccine has an overall protective effect on the herd.

Trying to demonstrate an economic benefit for farmers would prove challenging. Using their models, the researchers show that herd-level effectiveness would be exceptionally difficult to estimate from partially-vaccinated herds, requiring a sample size in excess of 2,000 herds. ̽��ֱ��number of herds required could be reduced by a ‘three arm design’ that includes fully-vaccinated, partially-vaccinated and unvaccinated control herds; however, such a design would still require around 500 fully-vaccinated herds and controls – presenting potential logistical and financial barriers – yet would still have a high risk of failure.

Instead, the researchers propose a natural transmission experiment involving housing a mixture of vaccinated and unvaccinated cattle with a number of infected cattle. Such an experiment, they argue, could provide robust evaluation of both the efficacy and mode of action of vaccination using as few as 200 animals. This would help screen any prospective vaccines before larger, more expensive and otherwise riskier trials in the field.

“We already know that the BCG vaccine has the potential to protect cattle from bovine TB infection,” says Dr Andrew Conlan from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the study’s first author. “Our results highlight the enormous scale of trials that would be necessary to evaluate BCG alongside continuing testing in the field.

“Such trials would be hugely expensive, and it isn’t even clear whether enough farms could be recruited. This scale could be dramatically reduced by using smaller scale natural transmission studies.”

Based on current knowledge of the likely efficacy of BCG, the researchers say their models do not predict a substantial benefit of vaccination at the herd level when used as a supplement to ongoing test-and-slaughter. Ruling out the use of vaccination as a replacement, rather than a supplement, to test-and-slaughter will inevitably limit the effectiveness and perceived benefits for farmers.

“If we could consider replacing test-and-slaughter with vaccination, then the economics becomes much more attractive, particularly those in lower income countries,” says Professor James Wood, Head of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “Then, we would no longer need to carry out expensive testing, but could instead rely on passive surveillance through the slaughterhouses.”

̽��ֱ��study was funded by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Alborada Trust

Reference
Conlan, AJK, et al. ̽��ֱ��intractable challenge of evaluating cattle vaccination as a control for bovine Tuberculosis. eLife; 5 June 2018; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.27694.001

Field trials for a vaccine to protect cattle against bovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) would need to involve 500 herds – potentially as many as 75,000-100,000 cattle – to demonstrate cost effectiveness for farmers, concludes a study published today in the journal eLife.

Our results highlight the enormous scale of trials that would be necessary to evaluate BCG alongside continuing testing in the field. Such trials would be hugely expensive, and it isn’t even clear whether enough farms could be recruited

Andrew Conlan

Knarrhultpia

Curious cows

Researcher Profile: Dr Andrew Conlan

It may seem surprising to find a physicist in the Department of Veterinary Medicine, but this was how Dr Andrew Conlan began his career at the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh. He is now an applied mathematician and statistician at in Cambridge’s Disease Dynamics Unit, engaged in work which he describes as “intensively multi-disciplinary”, requiring him to work within multiple environments with medics, veterinarians, farmers, policymakers – and even school children.

Andrew’s research sets out to use mathematics to predict the spread of infectious disease within populations and provide evidence to inform policy on the control of infectious diseases in humans and animals. His work centres around controlling the spread of diseases such as bovine TB and human diseases including, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, norovirus and meningitis.

“Policy decisions on the control of infectious diseases often have to be made quickly based on limited information and data,” he says. “I believe that government policy on infectious disease control should be based on evidence and good science.”

Although much of his research is office-based, involving analysing data, writing computational models and occasionally pen-and-paper work, he also does a lot of work with schools, working with pupils on research projects and delivering lessons on disease transmission.

“I’ve been involved in running citizen science projects for many years now, which have led to several peer reviewed papers on how social contact networks in schools could be useful to predict the spread of infectious disease,” he explains (while, ironically, nursing a cold picked up from his son, who had in turn picked it up at nursery). “I dreamed it up over a tea break with my colleague Ken Eames. At the time very little work had been down on contact patterns in school age children as they are a potentially vulnerable population that is difficult to access. We thought that getting them to do the research themselves and take ownership would be a way to address it – and it worked!”

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Of cabbages and cows: increasing agricultural yields in Africa

lw355 — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 11:17:32 +0000

̽��ֱ��humble cabbage, universally despised by British schoolchildren, has found unexpected popularity on another continent. But just as the people of Ghana have developed an appetite – and a market – for this leafy green, so too has something else: a virus carried by aphids that causes the cabbages to wilt and die

By contrast, a parasite that emaciates cattle across sub-Saharan Africa has been around for thousands of years but continues to take its toll on certain species of the animals it infects. Prominent ribs are the frequent hallmarks of trypanosomiasis – caused by the presence of a cunning parasite that evades the animal’s immune system by periodically changing its protein ‘coat’.

Meanwhile, farmers in Ethiopia are turning away from the traditional zebu cattle towards breeds that produce greater quantities of milk. As a result they are exposing their herds – and themselves – to increasing levels of tuberculosis (TB) that are brought about by intensified animal husbandry practices.

What links cabbages and cows are three programmes that hope to connect fundamental research with improving farm yields, and in so doing contribute to solving a looming pan-African problem. More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. And more people means a requirement for more food.

Ethiopia, for example, has the largest livestock population in Africa but, with a growing population and increasing urbanisation, even its 53 million cattle are not enough. And now efforts to intensify farming in the country are bringing a significant health concern. “ ̽��ֱ��new breeds are more vulnerable than zebu to bovine TB,” explains Professor James Wood from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “This may have health implications for those who work with and live alongside infected cattle, and also raises concerns about transmission to areas with previously low TB.”

Wood leads a £2.9 million research programme, ETHICOBOTS, which is looking at the feasibility of control strategies, including cattle vaccination. ̽��ֱ��programme combines partners in eight Ethiopian and UK institutions, and brings together veterinary scientists, epidemiologists, geneticists, immunologists and social scientists. “We need this mix because we are not only asking how effective strategies will be, but also whether farmers will accept them, and what the consequences are for prosperity and wellbeing.”

̽��ֱ��difference that increasing productivity can have on farmers’ livelihoods is not lost on an insect expert at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana, Dr Ken Fening, who is working on another food-related research project. Cabbages are not indigenous to the continent but have become a major cash crop for Ghanaian farmers and an important source of income for traders to markets and hotels.

“A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family,” he says. Recently, however, fields of stunted, yellowing, wilting cabbages, their leaves curled and dotted with mould, have become an all too familiar and devastating sight for the farmers of Ghana.

From his field station base in Kpong, Ghana, Fening works closely with smallholder farmers on pest control strategies. Two years ago they started reporting that a new disease was attacking their crops. “It seemed to be associated with massive infestations of pink and green aphids,” says Fening, “and from my studies of the way insects interact with many different vegetables, I’m familiar with the types of damage they can cause.”

Farmers were typically seeing the total loss of their crops and he realised that the devastation couldn’t just be caused by sap-sucking insects. Despite no previous reports of viral diseases affecting cabbage crops in Ghana, the symptoms suggested a viral pathogen.

With funding through the CAPREx programme, Fening began work with Cambridge plant biologist Dr John Carr. ̽��ֱ��pair collected samples of cabbage plants in Ghana showing signs of disease, and also aphids on the diseased plants. Back in Cambridge, Fening used screening techniques including a type of DNA ‘fingerprinting’ to identify the aphid species, and sophisticated molecular biology methods to try to identify the offending virus.

“Aphids are a common carrier of plant-infecting viruses,” explains Carr, whose research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of the £16 million SCPRID (Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development) initiative. “ ̽��ֱ��‘usual suspects’ are turnip mosaic virus and cauliflower mosaic virus, which affect cabbages in Europe and the US.”

“We found that two different species of aphids, pink and green, were generally found on the diseased cabbages,” says Fening. “It turned out this was the first record of the green aphid species, Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach), ever being seen in Ghana.” ̽��ֱ��pink aphid was identified as Myzus persicae (Sulzer).

What’s more, the virus was not what Carr expected, and work is now ongoing to identify the culprit. ̽��ֱ��sooner it can be characterised, the sooner sustainable crop protection strategies can be developed to prevent further spread of the disease not only in Ghana, but also in other countries in the region.

Another researcher who hopes that eradication strategies will be the outcome of her research project is Dr Theresa Manful. Like Fening, she is a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana and a CAPREx fellow. She has been working with Cambridge biochemist Professor Mark Carrington on African animal trypanosomiasis.

̽��ֱ��trypanosome that causes the disease is carried by the tsetse fly, which colonises vast swathes of sub-Saharan Africa. “This is a major constraint to cattle rearing in Africa,” she explains. “Although trypanosomiasis is also a disease of humans, the number of cases is low, and the more serious concerns about the disease relate to the economic impact on agricultural production.”

Carrington has worked for a quarter of a century on the parasite that causes the disease. He understands how the organism evades the immune system of the animal by changing its coat proteins so as to remain ‘invisible’.

“When you first start working on these parasites you are enamoured with the molecular mechanisms, which we now know a huge amount about,” he says. “But then when you look at the effect on large animals like cows you realise that there is almost nothing known about the dynamics of an infection, and even whether an infection acquired at an early age persists for its lifetime.”

Manful and Carrington set about testing herds in Ghana. They discovered that several trypanosome species can be found in the cattle at one time and that nearly all cattle were infected most of the time.

For Manful, one of the important gains has been the ability to expand the research in Ghana: “I now have a fully functional lab and can do DNA extraction and analysis in Ghana – I don’t have to bring samples to Cambridge. We are teaching students from five Ghanaian institutions the diagnostic methods.” She and Carrington have been recently funded through a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Africa Award to continue their work.

“Agriculture faces increasing challenges,” adds Carr. “Bioscience is playing a crucial part in developing ways to mitigate pest impact and reduce the spread of parasites.

“We want to ensure not only that every harvest is successful, but also that it’s maximally successful.”

ETHICOBOTS is funded under the Zoonoses and Emerging Livestock Systems (ZELS) programme, a research initiative in the UK jointly funded by six research council and government bodies. Dr Ken Fening and Dr Theresa Manful were funded by the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and ̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, through the Cambridge-Africa Programme.

Images: top: cabbage aphids (credit: Dr Ken Fening); bottom: cattle in Ghana (credit: Dr Theresa Manful and Professor Mark Carrington).

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields.

A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family

Ken Fening

Hendrik Terbeck

Greengrocer at Arusha Market

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ��Bible as a weapon of war

sjr81 — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 12:13:21 +0000

In 2012, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals, Joseph Kony, became one of the most repeated names on the planet thanks to a YouTube documentary (Kony 2012) and a call to action that sought to expose the terror and slaughter he inflicted on thousands of men, women and children in Central Africa.

Indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, Kony is now believed to be in hiding with his followers. He remains the genocidal leader of the murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who claimed to have been sent by God to liberate the people of Northern Uganda from the rival National Resistance Army (NRA). From the start of their insurgency in 1987, Kony’s LRA claimed as their major objective the establishment of a government based on the Ten Commandments.

In the decades since, his army – often made up of thousands of forcibly conscripted child soldiers – have wounded, widowed and orphaned indiscriminately as they prosecuted a campaign of violence with a vigour befitting Kony’s vengeful readings of the Old Testament.

In the process, the LRA are thought to have displaced as many as two million Ugandans, the vast majority from Uganda’s Acholiland, where Kony originally hails from.

Today, Acholiland is a haunted place; haunted by the ghosts and memories of a recent past that has been written in blood rather than ink during nearly two decades of conflict.

But what happens when former LRA soldiers, those who have used the Bible as a weapon of war, return home from the front lines? How do former soldiers – male and female, adults and children – learn to reread and reinterpret scriptures that once spoke to them of fire and brimstone?

Kony says it is God who sent him to kill people so nobody should stop him. You know this thing is very difficult to understand as Kony refers us to the Bible... In Kony’s time, God has sent the Holy Spirit, and it is the one which is doing the work through Kony.
Zacchaeus, a former LRA commander

This is the puzzle facing Dr Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala from Makerere ̽��ֱ�� in Uganda. As a CAPREx fellow, she spent time in Cambridge working with Dr Emma Wild-Wood, from the Faculty of Divinity and the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.

Nambalirwa Nkabala interviewed returning LRA soldiers in Uganda in order to examine how a positive engagement with biblical texts – especially those that seem to support violence – can help to promote peace instead.

She says: “My project identifies difficult texts in the Old Testament and seeks to identify the means by which they can be used in a constructive and meaningful way – with the central focus being on whether a particular interpretation promotes human dignity or not.

“ ̽��ֱ��way the LRA used the Bible, in a literal sense, to justify their violent actions has caused a complete overturn of the social and generational structures of the Acholi people.

“ ̽��ֱ��former LRA members I interviewed claim that all their actions are in accordance with Bible teachings; obedience to the law meant that anyone considered to have broken the Ten Commandments had to be destroyed.”

Kelly, a former child soldier, told Nambalirwa Nkabala that the Bible teaches that ‘somebody who does not obey must be killed’. This is the level of indoctrination that Cambridge researchers are trying to untangle as they work alongside Acholi leaders of varying denominations to promote peace and reconciliation using texts that were once wielded to justify murder on an industrial scale.

However, their work is complicated by the fact that Acholi cultural beliefs – as well as some readings of the Old Testament – also permit killing in exceptional circumstances, meaning that the LRA may have appropriated elements of Acholi culture to justify their own murderous ideology. For instance, the Achioli Chief and elders can pass ngolo kop me too – or ‘judgement of death’ – where killing is permitted, Likewise, Kony, a former altar boy in the Catholic Church, was brought up by a catechist father whom Nambalirwa Nkabala believes exposed him to Old Testament passages of death and punishment from an early age.

“Former LRA soldiers must be ready to reread the texts they were exposed to in a different way,” adds Nambalirwa Nkabala. “Texts with a violent message should be read with an ethical and nonviolent stance. Rather than passively accept what the text says, we must engage in dialogue with it. It is every Christian’s duty to expose and challenge any textual message which permits violence.

“ ̽��ֱ��Bible must be read contextually. By asking about the role of the text to a particular context, interpreters will automatically be pushed into the habit of checking what implications a particular reading/interpretation could have on a particular community.”

Wild-Wood met with Christian and Muslim leaders of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI) during her trip to Uganda in 2015 as she sought to understand how the Bible is now being used to rebuild society. She was struck by the commitment to peace across differing faiths and denominations.

“A great deal of thought has gone into how former combatants can be rehabilitated,” says Wild-Wood. “From my focus groups, the religious leaders were optimistic about the future, but the challenges are many. They are dealing with people who are very traumatised. Some see the LRA soldiers as perpetrators, some see them as victims. But there is a recognition that people have dealt with awful situations – and may fall apart afterwards.”

When you look at what happened in the north and you go to the Bible and you read from the beginning to the last part you may find that 90 per cent of what happened here is in the Bible. Whatever has happened is exactly how God designed it.
Steve, a former LRA commander

Wild-Wood says that the ARLPI’s initial desire to publicise the atrocities being carried out by the LRA – and to protect civilians where possible – has now refocused to aid the process of reintegrating former combatants, and is working alongside international charities like World Vision to facilitate the transfer of former LRA soldiers from reception centres back to their communities.

“Projects of post-war reconciliation often engage with traditional beliefs and customs in order to effect lasting peace,” adds Wild-Wood. “Acholiland is no exception, and Acholi practices have been ultilised in restoring human relations. However, in the LRA and the wider population there are many Christians and a significant number of Muslims. It is important to engage the beliefs of those religious traditions when working towards long-term solutions to the destruction of society.”

While there may be a distance yet to travel, Nambalirwa Nkabala remains optimistic about Uganda’s future as it seeks to heal the deep scars caused by Kony and the decades of division and war he brought to his country.

“ ̽��ֱ��advantage in all this is that the Acholi have a deep sense of community and solidarity,” she says. “This is exemplified in the various means they use to reincorporate wrongdoers back into their community. If the Acholi communities can be encouraged to maintain their cultural values of healing and reconciliation – even while reading texts that may have a violent message – then they can in the future avoid situations that can lead to the destruction and erosion of these most important of values.”

Dr Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala was funded by the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and ̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, through the Cambridge-Africa Programme.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

How do former Lord’s Resistance Army soldiers – men, women and children who have used the Bible as a weapon of war – learn to reread the scriptures once they return home? This is the puzzle facing researchers from Uganda and Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��way the LRA used the Bible, in a literal sense, to justify their violent actions has caused a complete overturn of the social and generational structures of the Acholi people."

Helen Nambalirwa Nkabala

Charles Roffey

Kony 2012

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Keeping the lights on in Ghana

sc604 — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 09:00:56 +0000

In Ghana, ‘Dumsor’ is a part of life. An annoyance, a risk, an impediment to be sure, but a part of life all the same.

̽��ֱ��half-joking, half-serious term, which roughly translates to ‘off-and-on’, refers to the frequent blackouts in the country. Entire neighbourhoods go dark in an instant. ̽��ֱ��patchwork electrical grid can leave one side of a street in darkness and the other fully lit. So widespread are the blackouts that John Mahama, until recently the country’s President, was often referred to as ‘Mr Dumsor’ by Ghanaians.

Like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana doesn’t produce enough power to meet demand. Its power supply has been erratic since the early 2000s, when water levels in the Akosombo Dam, the country’s main hydroelectric dam, dropped to dangerously low levels, and they have yet to recover fully. Although Ghana has one of the highest rates of access to electricity in Africa, in 2015 the country still experienced blackouts on 159 days.

“Ghana’s not so different from the UK, really – both countries have an electrical grid that’s under enormous strain,” says Dr Kevin Knowles of Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. “ ̽��ֱ��difference is we’d be up in arms if the lights went out all the time, whereas in Ghana it’s just a fact of life. But there are things that researchers in Ghana are doing to help improve the electrical infrastructure.”

One such researcher is Dr Abu Yaya, Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana. Yaya has been working with Knowles with the aim of developing a home-grown industry back in Ghana to make a small but crucial component for power transmission: electroporcelain.

For electricity to get from the places where it is generated, such as the Akosombo Dam, to homes and businesses, it needs a well-established electrical grid made up of pylons, substations and transmission lines. Whereas high-voltage power lines are insulated by the surrounding air, a physical insulator is required at the point where the power lines are supported by utility poles or transmission towers, or where power lines enter buildings. These insulators prevent the loss of current and concentrate its flow, as well as help prevent electric shock.

Most insulators for high-voltage power transmission are made from glass or porcelain. Knowles describes the electroporcelain manufacturing industry as “mature”. In fact, in the UK it’s been around since the 1860s – a reason perhaps why the insulators can look curiously old-fashioned and incongruous, like small white ceramic bowls or brown spiral candlesticks perched on the arms of pylons.

However, despite the prevalence of raw materials to make electroporcelain in Ghana, electroporcelain ceramics are imported from other countries at great expense.

Ghana’s not so different from the UK, really – both countries have an electrical grid that’s under enormous strain. ̽��ֱ��difference is we’d be up in arms if the lights went out all the time, whereas in Ghana it’s just a fact of life
Kevin Knowles

It’s a frustrating situation says Yaya, who has now developed a method of making electrical insulators out of the materials available in Ghana. His aim is to scale up the process for commercial use in the country, and possibly to other sub-Saharan countries as well. ̽��ֱ��process is economical because all it needs is the raw materials, water and a furnace.

Yaya grew up in the slums in Nima, a suburb of Accra in Ghana. After completing his undergraduate studies in his home country, he received funding from the European Union to complete his Master’s degree in materials science at the ̽��ֱ�� of Aveiro, Portugal, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Aalborg, Denmark, and his PhD at the ̽��ֱ�� of Nantes, France, after which he returned home to take up a post at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana.

It was when he returned to Ghana that Yaya first became interested in developing electroporcelain, after a discussion with a retired lab technician who had a stockpile of clays and feldspar, but wasn’t sure what to do with it. “I figured out the clays and feldspar could be used to make electroporcelain, and at the same time I realised that Ghana imports all of its electroporcelain from Asian countries,” he says. “So I asked myself why can’t we make these products – and that is how I ended up in Cambridge.”

In 2015, Yaya won a six-month CAPREx fellowship at Cambridge to work with Knowles, an expert in materials for use in challenging engineering environments. Most of Knowles’ research focuses on how small changes to the microstructure of materials can improve their mechanical, electronic or optical properties for use in components such as connecting rods, fan blades, glass and fuel cells.

“In electroporcelain, the raw materials are clay, feldspar and silica,” explains Knowles. “When these raw materials are mixed together in the right proportions and fired together, at a temperature such as 1,200°C, an electrical insulator is produced. What happens during firing is that the feldspar melts and this helps to bind the particles together inducing further chemical reactions and reducing porosity. ̽��ֱ��result is a dense product that can be given a surface glaze to enable it to pass national safety standards tests for porcelain insulators.”

Yaya adds: “Normally, imported electroporcelains are made to suit the original country’s specifications, and are not made specifically for Ghana or other African countries, where the climatic conditions could vary. By producing these products in Ghana using local raw materials, they are subjected to our own environmental conditions.

They would be sent to the Ghana Standards Authority for further testing to ensure that failure does not occur rapidly when the electroporcelains are in use.”

Dumsor is an irritation at times but it also shows the power crisis we must overcome
Abu Yaya

As well as working closely with Knowles, Yaya has also spent time working with UK-based company Almath Crucibles to optimise his process. His aim from the outset was to develop a manufacturing process for electroporcelain that would meet international standards so it can be sold to Ghana’s electricity company.

It’s a crucial time for Ghana, which has committed itself to universal electricity access by 2020. Making sure the electricity supply is widely available and reliable will aid the growth of industries and the economic development of the country. It will also support the demand for power by an increasing population.

“If we are able to manufacture insulators in Ghana then they will be far more affordable than imported insulators, and we stand a better chance of expanding our electrical infrastructure to improve capacity,” explains Yaya. Meanwhile, foreign investors are beginning to take notice of Ghana’s richness in materials: in August 2016, a Chinese-owned company opened the first phase of a US$60m factory in the Free Zone in Eshiem in Ghana to manufacture floor tiles and other ceramic products to supply domestic and international ceramics markets.

Yaya continues to collaborate with Knowles, as well as with other researchers in Europe. He is currently in the process of patenting his technique through a ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana Technology Transfer Grant, and is now looking for potential commercial partners to help him bring the technology from a laboratory to an industrial scale.

“Dumsor is an irritation at times but it also shows the power crisis we must overcome,” he says. “We need to be sure that limitations in generating and distributing electricity do not become a development challenge for the country.

Dr Abu Yaya is at the ̽��ֱ�� of Ghana. His research with Dr Kevin Knowles was funded by the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and ̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, through the Cambridge-Africa Programme.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

When Ghanaian Abu Yaya wondered why his country imports all of its electroporcelain – a small but crucial component for electrical power transmission – it led to a collaboration with Cambridge materials scientist Kevin Knowles that might one day result in Ghana being able to reduce its frequent blackouts.

So I asked myself why can’t we make these products – and that is how I ended up in Cambridge"

Abu Yaya

jbdodane on flickr

Akosombo Dam, Ghana

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Cambridge-Africa Programme: 58 institutions, 26 countries, and growing

lw355 — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 11:31:08 +0000

Having the chance to contribute to the pool of human knowledge depends a great deal on where you live in the world. Opportunities are skewed in favour of those who are better resourced and in favour of those who receive, and give, world-class training.

Knowledge lies at the heart of social and economic development, so countries with a thriving knowledge economy and good research infrastructure develop quicker; and the gap between those that don’t have these advantages grows ever wider. Among those lagging behind are many of the African countries.

And yet, explains Professor David Dunne, Africa has excellent researchers. He knows because for 30 years he’s been working in Africa with African colleagues on neglected tropical diseases: “I realised that they were brilliant but they didn’t have the opportunities they deserved to make their unique contribution both to solving Africa’s challenges and to adding to the sum of global knowledge.

“Even in the best African universities, there is a chronic shortage of researchers with access to the resources they need to be internationally competitive and to mentor future researchers,” he explains. “There just aren’t enough of them.”

“In parts of Africa, sometimes the choice seems to be between prioritising universal access to a basic education or investing in tertiary education and research scholarship. In reality, there is no choice,” says Dunne. “Both are absolutely essential.”

Eight years ago, he realised that universities like Cambridge could help bridge this resource and mentorship gap in Africa in ways that would build research capacity “while avoiding the loss of indigenous talent that so often occurs when better opportunities are available outside of Africa.”

Cambridge-Africa is the result. This ̽��ֱ��-wide institutional structure is designed to make expertise and resources available to support African researchers working in Africa on African priorities.

Today, the Programme supports African researchers in 58 different institutions in 26 countries across the continent. Its various schemes link PhD, postdoctoral and group leaders with a network of over 200 Cambridge-based researchers.

Key to its success is a ‘matchmaking’ model of partnership, as Dr Pauline Essah explains: “We carefully match the research interests of African and Cambridge researchers. It means there are benefits for both parties, and the potential for equitable and sustainable long-term collaboration after the mentorship has finished.”

She adds: “Being an African myself, and having studied in an African university before studying and working in Cambridge, I know that it wouldn’t work if we were just trying to take what Cambridge has and plant it in Africa. Instead we are modifying and adapting it in response to the needs identified by our African colleagues.”

Dunne and Essah began with targeting research in health: “We saw this as an easy win on both sides – it meets one of Africa’s greatest challenges, and it gives wider geographic scope to Cambridge researchers.”

They were surprised however by the scale of the response: “We were pushing against an open door,” says Dunne. Soon, scholars from archaeology to zoology, engineering to English, politics to plant sciences were joining the scheme. In 2015, the Programme was adopted as the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s official international strategy to support African academia across all subject areas.

“And of course this is good for Cambridge too,” says Dunne. “It means our researchers have greater opportunities to collaborate globally and our students can experience working in Africa. It has helped make Cambridge a truly international ̽��ֱ��.”

Speaking at the annual Cambridge-Africa Day symposium, Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz said: “ ̽��ֱ��speed with which the Cambridge-Africa Programme has developed is phenomenal. We are trusted by our partners, and the Programme has buy-in from our academic community. This has been essential to the programme’s success. Today, it is no longer something done by a handful of enthusiasts. It is now something embedded in the ̽��ֱ��’s DNA.”

Adds Dunne: “ ̽��ֱ��first of the Cambridge-Africa fellows are now starting to fulfil their outstanding potential as researchers and leaders, providing mentorship to the next generation of young African researchers.” To date, all 54 of the African PhD and postdoctoral researchers who have completed their fellowships are still working in sub-Saharan universities or research institutions.

“Universities are not just luxury items for wealthy societies,” he says. “They are equally vital to the futures of low- and middle-income countries if those countries are to share in the advantages of knowledge creation.”

Cambridge-Africa fellowship schemes are funded by the Wellcome Trust, the ALBORADA Trust, the Isaac Newton Trust and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Inset picture: Professor David Dunne and Dr Pauline Essah. Credit: Mark Miniszko.

We ask how a 'matchmaking' programme that teams up Cambridge and African researchers is making expertise and resources available to support Africans working in Africa.

Universities are not just luxury items for wealthy societies. They are equally vital to the futures of low- and middle-income countries if those countries are to share in the advantages of knowledge creation

David Dunne

Mark Miniszko

Dr Vincent Owino, now conducting research in Kenya, was awarded a seed grant from the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund

Fellowship schemes

ALBORADA Research Fund

Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx)

Cambridge-Africa PhD Scholarship Scheme

Makerere ̽��ֱ��/Uganda Virus Research Institute Infection and Immunity Research (MUII)

Training Health Researchers into Vocational Excellence (THRiVE)

Wellcome Trust-Cambridge Centre for Global Health Research

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Cambridge engagement with Africa will expand following major gift

th288 — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 13:59:40 +0000

̽��ֱ��ALBORADA Trust, a UK charity that supports the global advancement of education, health, poverty relief and animal welfare, has confirmed that it will donate £4 million to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s flagship Cambridge-Africa Programme.

This donation signals the ALBORADA Trust’s growing commitment to the Cambridge-Africa Programme, which it has been supporting for the past three years.

̽��ֱ��funds will help researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to initiate or enhance research projects in all disciplines involving partners at sub-Saharan African universities or research institutions. Support from the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund can cover research costs, including equipment, fieldwork, travel and research training costs in Africa.

Since its creation in 2012, the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund has supported 78 research projects in 11 African countries in more than 30 areas of knowledge. ̽��ֱ��projects have involved 28 African institutions, with 78 African researchers and 86 Cambridge researchers participating.

Projects that have received awards from the ALBORADA Research Fund in the past year include Ha-Joon Chang and Julius Kiiza’s investigation of the links between development and incipient state institutions in Rwanda; Devon Curtis and Paul Omach’s research into local communities and peacebuilding in Northern Uganda; and Andrew Grant and Maitshwarelo Ignatious Matsheka’s study of Campylobacter bacteria from diarrhoeal patients and chickens in Botswana.

Travel awards have facilitated research into enteric infections (Ian Goodfellow and Allison Elliott), and into capacity-building in computational linguistics (Paula Battery and Fridah Katushemererwe) –both in Uganda. They have also allowed researchers to examine the challenges to the sustainability of heritage sites in Kenya, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Botswana (Marie Louise Stig Sorensen and Chris Boonzaaier).

Professor David Dunne, Director of the Cambridge-Africa Programme, remarked: “ ̽��ֱ��first donation by the ALBORADA Trust in 2012, to match funding provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, for our Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) initiative, was essential to strengthening the ̽��ֱ��’s engagement with African partners. It enabled the establishment of research collaborations between Cambridge and Africa, and in many cases allowed the collaborators to obtain further external national and international funding.

“ ̽��ֱ��new gift will more than double the value of the awards we can make over the next 10 years. It consolidates the Cambridge-Africa Programme’s activities as one of the ̽��ֱ��’s major international initiatives, and sends a strong signal to other potential funders about the Programme’s strengths.”

Commenting on the gift, Professor James Wood, Head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine and ALBORADA Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science, said: “We know that across the African continent there are large numbers of talented people we can support through the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund.

“This gift will allow us to engage with many of them on a much wider scale, and to make sure they are performing at their best—not just while in Cambridge but also while delivering the results of their research in their own communities, countries and regions.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, added: “ ̽��ֱ��generous support of the ALBORADA Trust played a pivotal role in establishing the Cambridge-Africa Programme. This extension will be transformative, offering us the unique opportunity to enhance the programme’s impact across the continent.”

Pictures: Jenneke van der Wal, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and Saudah Namyalo, Makerere ̽��ֱ��, received ALBORADA funding for their study of the Luganda language.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s determination to enhance research capacity across Africa, and to engage in collaborative research with African partners, has been given a significant boost following the announcement of a major gift.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

" ̽��ֱ��Professor is World Cup": understanding ‘secret’ urban languages

pbh25 — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 12:56:30 +0000

Uganda has one of the world’s largest percentages of people under 30 – more than 78% of its 37 million citizens, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund. Many do not use the commonly spoken languages of Uganda (Kiswahili, English and Luganda) in everyday speech but instead express themselves in an ever-evolving street language called Luyaaye.

Originally a ‘secret language’ spoken by criminals, Luyaaye has grown in popularity because it’s seen as more playful and less traditional by many of its speakers, with its “joyful” use of English, Luganda and other languages.

Many of those who use Luyaaye are concentrated within Kampala, the capital city of a country that faces many challenges, including serious health problems. To combat these threats to health – and to get other social messages across – the government must communicate with its population effectively. This means using Luyaaye alongside the official languages, argue researchers from Africa and Cambridge who are working collaboratively as part of the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx).

Dr Saudah Namyalo from Makerere ̽��ֱ�� and Dr Jenneke van der Wal from Cambridge’s Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics have joined forces to understand how this increasingly popular, yet currently undocumented, urban language is built. ̽��ֱ��need is increasing, said Namyalo, as more people come to use forms of Luyaaye to communicate. “It is currently classified as an Urban Youth Language but it is becoming more widespread and used by some older people.”

Such languages are not unique to Uganda – elsewhere, forms of multicultural British English, the Dutch street language ‘straattaal’ and the ‘Camfranglais’ of the Cameroon are all examples of languages that have evolved out of, and usurped, the country’s mother tongue in certain communities, explained Namyalo.

These languages are fast-moving in their appropriation of new words, often borrowing them from TV, films and music. “I love the speed at which Luyaaye changes,” she said. “For instance, the World Cup was seen as a very positive thing. So world cup quickly became a shorthand for ‘a good thing’ or ‘excellent’.

“For a lot of people, Luyaaye is for fun – it is just for laughs! It often uses metonymy [calling something not by its own name but by a name linked to it] with surprising and comic results. So a Professor is someone with ‘street smarts’ who has learned to beat the authorities, to get away with anything.”

However, the language also has its darker side. ̽��ֱ��growth of Luyaaye began in the 1970s during the Idi Amin reign. “Illegal trade grew and it is thought that the language provided a code to serve those people who were involved in trade between Nairobi and Kampala. It was mostly spoken by the illiterate, young business community,” Namyalo explained.

Even today its past continues to influence its development as Luyaaye helps criminals conduct business and exclude the uninitiated from their ranks, said Namyalo. “Kampala is divided into five divisions and they are Luyaaye territories. If you are a criminal you are not supposed to cross into another territory – or you risk being burnt alive. ̽��ֱ��Luyaaye you use can show which division you are from or it can be used to uncover if you do not belong.”

Namyalo points to these past links with criminality as a factor in the reticence of the establishment in accepting Luyaaye: “Higher society does not take the language, or those who use it, seriously. When you use Luyaaye you are thought of as uncultured, and yet it is the more meaningful language for the youth than Luganda or other formal languages used in Uganda.”

She has begun the process of documenting this little-studied and evolving language, and would like to produce a dictionary. From her research, she now thinks of the language in terms of ‘layers’, each layer representing a slightly different set of vocabulary. ̽��ֱ��secret language used by criminals is what she calls ‘core’ Luyaaye, while the second layer is spoken by the youth, and the outer layer is the ‘ordinary’ Luyaaye, easiest to understand and popular with the general public.

Her work has so far concentrated on the lexical (word meaning) aspects of the language, but her collaboration with Van der Wal will allow them to examine the syntax (how sentences are constructed) of Luyaaye as compared with Luganda.

An expert in Bantu languages like Luganda, Van der Wal is also a member of a large-scale project to investigate the basic building blocks that underpin how languages of the world are structured – the Rethinking Comparative Syntax (ReCoS) project funded by the European Research Council and led by Professor Ian Roberts, also in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics.

“ ̽��ֱ��ability to speak a language is something very special – it is unique and part of what makes us human beings,” explained Van der Wal. “I want to find out what allows us to make grammatical sentences and how this varies between languages. For instance, unlike in some neighbouring languages, in Luganda you can say a word in two different ways: you can talk about eating rice (omuceere), but leave off the first vowel (mucheere) and it suggests you are only eating rice – it gives an exclusive focus on the rice.”

Namyalo’s visit to Cambridge and Van der Wal’s recent visit to Uganda were funded by CAPREx and the Alborada Research Fund, both of which are initiatives within the umbrella Cambridge-Africa Programme at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��Programme aims to strengthen Africa’s capacity for research by equipping African researchers with skills and resources, and to promote mutually beneficial, long-term collaborations with African researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

For Van der Wal, research in Africa with African academics has been vital for enabling her to carry out meaningful research: “I loved working with Saudah in Uganda and listening to the languages as spoken. It was great to do field work together and get my hands dirty – well, get my ears dirty – and learn about yet another Bantu language.”

Namyalo sees the project as vital for helping her country combat some of its most challenging difficulties. “Programmes have been carried out to spread information about AIDS but even with increased dissemination there was a decrease in the take-up of that information. When asked what would help, people said ‘speak our language’.”

CAPREx is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Alborada Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust

Inset image: Dr Jenneke van der Wal and Dr Saudah Namyalo

Research into a ‘playful’ and increasingly popular urban language that grew out of the necessity for criminals to hide their true intent could help organisations in Uganda communicate better with the country’s huge young population.

When you use Luyaaye you are thought of as uncultured, and yet it is the more meaningful language for the youth than Luganda or other formal languages used in Uganda

Saudah Namyalo

Understanding ‘secret’ urban language

Rod Waddington

Strolling, Uganda

Luyaaye

While the basic syntactic framework for Luyaaye is Luganda, it borrows words from English, with dashes of Sheng, Kiswahili and Sudanese.

As well as borrowing whole words it also borrows suffixes and affixes such as the English –ing which becomes –inga in Luyaaye.

Quite often when speakers use English words they do not alter the spelling, so that front page is used to mean 'forehead' and blood used to mean 'brother' or 'sister'.

̽��ֱ��language also uses metaphor, thus okusunagitta literally means 'to play a guitar' but actually means 'to scratch', and I would like to kill a chimpanzee means 'I would like to go to the toilet'.

It also uses tricks like antonym – making the meaning the opposite of what is said, so okwesalaobuwero means 'dressed in old cloth' but actually means to be smartly dressed.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

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Attribution-ShareAlike