̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Africa

Early Career Researcher 2024

zs332 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 10:58:58 +0000

̽��ֱ��Early Career Researcher winner for 2024 is Dr Gabriel Okello, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, School of Technology, Murray Edwards College.

Report highlights ̽��ֱ��’s under-researched African collections

ta385 — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 06:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ��'s collections include an estimated 350,000 artefacts, alongside natural history specimens and human/ancestral remains, from Africa, according to a new report aiming to promote further research, collaboration and engagement, especially with African scholars and communities. ̽��ֱ��report emphasises that the labour and expertise of countless unnamed African people is hidden in the histories of these collections.

Previously unknown Neolithic society in Morocco discovered

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 08:34:03 +0000

Archaeological fieldwork in Morocco has discovered the earliest, previously unknown 3400–2900 BC farming society from a poorly understood period of north-west African prehistory. This is the earliest and largest agricultural complex yet found in Africa beyond the Nile.

This study, published in the journal Antiquity, reveals for the first time the importance of the Maghreb (north-west Africa) in the emergence of complex societies in the wider Mediterranean during the fourth and third millennia BC.

With a Mediterranean environment, a border with the Sahara desert and the shortest maritime crossing between Africa and Europe, the Maghreb is perfectly located as a hub for major cultural developments and intercontinental connections in the past.

Whilst the region’s importance during the Palaeolithic, Iron Age and Islamic periods is well known, there is a significant gap in knowledge of the archaeology of the Maghreb between c. 4000 and 1000 BC, a period of dynamic change across much of the Mediterranean.

To tackle this, a team of archaeologists led by Prof Cyprian Broodbank from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Prof Youssef Bokbot from INSAP, and Prof Giulio Lucarini from CNR-ISPC and ISMEO, have carried out collaborative, multidisciplinary archaeological fieldwork at Oued Beht, Morocco.

"For over thirty years I have been convinced that Mediterranean archaeology has been missing something fundamental in later prehistoric north Africa," said Broodbank. "Now, at last, we know that was right, and we can begin to think in new ways that acknowledge the dynamic contribution of Africans to the emergence and interactions of early Mediterranean societies."

"For more than a century the last great unknown of later Mediterranean prehistory has been the role played by the societies of Mediterranean’s southern, Africa shores west of Egypt," say the authors of the new study. "Our discoveries prove that this gap has been due not to any lack of major prehistoric activity, but to the relative lack of investigation, and publishing. Oued Beht now affirms the central role of the Maghreb in the emergence of both Mediterranean and wider African societies."

These results reveal that the site was the largest agricultural complex from this period in Africa outside of the Nile region. All of the evidence points to the presence of a large-scale farming settlement—similar in size to Early Bronze Age Troy.

̽��ֱ��team recovered unprecedented domesticated plant and animal remains, pottery and lithics, all dating to the Final Neolithic period. Excavation also revealed extensive evidence for deep storage pits.

Importantly, contemporaneous sites with similar pits have been found on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar in Iberia, where finds of ivory and ostrich egg have long pointed to African connections. This suggests that the Maghreb was instrumental in wider western Mediterranean developments during the fourth millennium BC.

Oued Beht and the north-west Maghreb were clearly integral parts of the wider Mediterranean region. As such, these discoveries significantly change our understanding of the later prehistory of the Mediterranean and Africa.

As the authors of the Antiquity article state: “It is crucial to consider Oued Beht within a wider co-evolving and connective framework embracing peoples both sides of the Mediterranean-Atlantic gateway during the later fourth and third millennia BC - and, for all the likelihood of movement in both directions, to recognise it as a distinctively African-based community that contributed substantially to the shaping of that social world.”

arch.jpg

Multi-disciplinary archaeological survey at the site of Oued Beht, Morocco, reveals a previously unknown 3400–2900 BC farming society, shedding new light on North Africa’s role in Mediterranean prehistory.

For over thirty years I have been convinced that Mediterranean archaeology has been missing something fundamental

Prof Cyprian Broodbank

Lorena Lombardi & Moad Radi

Stone tools from Oued Beht

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 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 – 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.

Yes

Innovation for Africa's Climate Future

plc32 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 10:07:20 +0000

̽��ֱ��2024 Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Entrepreneurship Prize Competition recognises innovative ideas in agriculture, women’s health and digital technology.

Arcadia awards over £10 million for 2 major archaeology projects

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:57:42 +0000

̽��ֱ��McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology and ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Development and Alumni Relations are pleased to announce that the Arcadia charitable foundation has awarded grants totalling £10.3 million to continue the work of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) project and the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project.

Archaeological sites and monuments around the world are increasingly threatened by human activities and the impacts of climate change. These pressures are especially severe in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where local heritage agencies are often short-staffed and under-resourced; where existing sites and monuments registers are often incompletely digitised; and where many sites are not yet documented and large areas remain archaeologically under-studied. Alongside the intensity of natural and human threats, these factors combine to make the implementation of planning controls, impact assessments, mitigation measures and long-term monitoring especially challenging.

̽��ֱ��five-year funding of £5.7 million to the MAEASaM project supports the continuation of its mission to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across Africa, building on the work accomplished thus far with our in-country partners in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Senegal, Mali, Kenya, Ethiopia and Botswana. ̽��ֱ��funding will also allow the project to expand its collaborations with other national heritage agencies in Africa, including Mozambique, Gambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to develop innovative approaches to better integrate heritage concerns into national planning and development control activities

During Phase 1 of the project, the MAEASaM team managed to assess a total area of 1,024,656 square kilometres using a combination of historical maps, Google Earth and medium-resolution satellite imagery, resulting in digital documentation of some 67,748 sites and monuments. Concurrent with this work, the team created digital records of 31,461 legacy sites, from unique information sets spanning almost a century of archaeological fieldwork on the continent. ̽��ֱ��accuracy of a sample of these records were also assessed via 11 field verification campaigns, helping establish the current status of these sites and levels of endangerment from anthropogenic and natural processes, while also locating many previously undocumented sites. Training, skills enhancement and knowledge transfer activities were also delivered via both in-person and online events, often in collaboration with MAHSA, and team members presented their work at 15 international meetings and via numerous social media and website posts.

Professor Paul Lane, Principal Investigator of the MAEASaM project, said: “I am truly delighted by the news of this award and would like to take this opportunity to thank Arcadia for their continuing support. As well as allowing expansion of the project to cover other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, this further 5 years of funding will enable the creation of a repository of digital assets and a sustainable system for more rapidly and easily assessing, researching, monitoring and managing archaeological heritage, accessible to heritage professionals, researchers and students across the continent.”

Similarly, the five-year grant of £4.6 million to the MAHSA project supports its continuing mission to document endangered archaeological heritage in Pakistan and India, working alongside collaborators in both countries to support their efforts to protect and manage the rich heritage of the region. Over the next 5 years, MAHSA will continue to develop and populate its Arches database, creating a resource to make heritage data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. MAHSA will consolidate the work it has begun in the Indus River Basin and surrounding areas, and will also expand its documentation efforts to include the coastline areas of both India and Pakistan, Baluchistan in Pakistan and the Ganges River Basin in north India.

During Phase 1, the MAHSA team georeferenced in excess of 1,300 historic Survey of India map sheets, covering over 890,000 square kilometres, and have reconstructed over 192,696 square kilometres of ancient hydrological networks. This groundwork has made it possible to digitise over 10000 legacy data records, and many of those records have been enriched. In addition, they carried out 5 collaborative archaeological surveys both as part of their training programme, and as part of new collaborative research with stakeholders in both India and Pakistan. They have engaged in policy-level dialogue with different government organisations in Pakistan and India, with an aim of working towards the development of a sustainable solution for the inclusion of heritage in urban and agricultural development strategies.

Professor Cameron Petrie, Principal Investigator of the MAHSA project, said: “I am extremely proud of what the collaborative MAHSA team have achieved during Phase 1, and the support from Arcadia for Phase 2 will allow us to continue making a transformational contribution to the documentation and understanding of the archaeological heritage of Pakistan and India. We are clarifying existing archaeological site locations datasets and collecting new ones at a scale never before attempted in South Asia.”

About Arcadia

Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1.2 billion (£900 million) to organisations around the world.

About Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM)

About Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA)

̽��ֱ��charitable foundation awards £10.3 million for the continuation of 2 Cambridge projects mapping endangered archaeological heritage in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Image from the MAEASaM Project

Yes

Sustained, purposeful investment key to ‘leaving no girl behind’, either in education or beyond

tdk25 — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 08:24:14 +0000

̽��ֱ��observations come from an evaluation of 14 projects across 10 countries in Africa and South Asia developed under the ‘Leave No Girl Behind’ (LNGB) initiative, launched in 2016. LNGB is part of the broader Girls’ Education Challenge, run by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

̽��ֱ��programme targets the most marginalised girls through structured interventions aimed at improving their academic skills and life chances. Collectively, these have aimed to reach 230,000 adolescent girls aged 10-19. ̽��ֱ��girls involved tend to come from very poor backgrounds. Many have married early, are teenage mothers, or have disabilities. All have either never attended school or dropped out early.

̽��ֱ��new analysis is the latest in a series of reports evaluating the impact of the UK’s recent, targeted support for the world’s least-advantaged girls in general. It was undertaken by a collaboration led by the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��research assessed the outcomes of the LNGB projects for more than 17,000 adolescent girls, complementing this with case studies from projects in Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal.

̽��ֱ��verdict is broadly positive. As well as enhancing basic literacy and numeracy skills, LNGB initiatives were found to have improved the girls’ life skills and well-being. Participants often displayed greater confidence and increased self-esteem. This enabled them to have more control over decisions relating to their education and work choices. Girls further reflected on how their future aspirations had changed for the better.

Despite this, the researchers highlight several ongoing challenges. Even after participating in an LNGB programme, many girls still encountered significant economic challenges and deep-rooted gender and social norms, which acted as barriers to their education and career development. With the Girls’ Education Challenge concluding in 2024, the report emphasises the need to engage a range of stakeholders in both LNGB projects and equivalent future initiatives, to identify ways to provide sustained support to tackle barriers that the most marginalised girls will continue to face into the future.

Dr Asma Zubairi, who was part of the REAL Centre’s evaluation team, said: “Leave No Girl Behind did a great job of providing more holistic support than many comparable interventions. Based on feedback from the girls themselves, however, it is clear that when the support stops, the same old problems resurface. There are some profound economic and social issues at play.”

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre, said: “As we approach the end of the Girls’ Education Challenge, we need to consider what comes next. What Leave No Girl Behind has achieved is really impressive, but there are also lessons to learn. In particular, it is clear that we cannot just switch the support pipeline off for marginalised girls, and expect all those good results to be sustained.”

A hallmark of the LNGB projects was their holistic approach to supporting girls in both their education and livelihood journeys. Beyond improving academic skills, such as basic literacy and numeracy, they also charted a ‘pathway’ for each girl’s future: guiding them towards work opportunities, skills training, or back into formal schooling.

Girls and families were often given money or in-kind support to facilitate this. In Ghana, for instance, the families of girls resuming school received one year of financial aid; elsewhere, girls starting businesses were given start-up kits or funding.

Interviews with the girls, families and community members consistently suggested they emerged as confident, independent problem-solvers; while the life-skills training introduced them to topics such as contraception and tackling gender-based violence, of which some were previously unaware. One, speaking about the Aarambha project in Nepal, said it “taught us about contraceptive methods to not give birth to a child…. I did not know anything like that before [and] I learned it after coming to the community learning centre”.

̽��ֱ��report identifies a ‘virtuous’ circle for many girls who entered employment because they often contributed directly to their communities through their work. In Kenya, for example, some girls who trained in tailoring ended up supplying school uniforms to their local area. This increased respect from their families and peers, which added to their overall sense of empowerment and wellbeing.

Despite these positives, there is evidence that societal attitudes remain a formidable hurdle for many of the girls to participate in education. Social expectations also diverted some from their chosen paths following the programme. Older adolescent girls, for example, were seen as too old to return to education and project facilitators noted they potentially faced ridicule if they tried.

In addition, not all girls were able to pursue pathways that matched their preferences. About one-quarter of girls who pursued work-related pathways had originally expressed a preference for formal education but were dissuaded from pursuing it. Moreover, many of the girls following a work-related pathway were pushed towards a limited list of occupations deemed ‘appropriate’ for women, such as tailoring and hairdressing.

̽��ֱ��report cites the case of Ayaan, a 20-year-old mother from Kenya who had originally dropped out of primary school. After joining an LNGB programme, Ayaan wanted to study chemistry, but was considered too old for formal education. She then opted to train as an electrician, only for her husband to reject this as “a man’s vocation”: “They [project in Kenya] told us that only the young kids have the option to go back to school….and my husband refused me to do electrician because he said that it is for men.” Ayaan ended up opening a business selling nuts, charcoal and clothing: a success on paper, but not when measured against her own dreams.

̽��ֱ��evaluation identifies other structural problems. Not all employers, for example, recognised the qualification girls received after graduating from the LNGB interventions, leaving some feeling “underappreciated and stuck with a useless certificate,” according to one interviewee involved in the implementation of an LNGB project in Zimbabwe.

Despite having initial financial backing, girls and families often struggled to afford school or sustain business ventures once the funding ended. In Kenya, about 20% of graduates from the training pathway remained jobless; 39% on the entrepreneurship pathway started businesses that subsequently failed. Societal prejudices sometimes intersected with this: in Kenya there were accounts of men destroying their wives’ sewing machines to stop them from working.

̽��ֱ��report emphasises that future projects will need to collaborate closely with a wide range of stakeholders from inception. These are likely to include governments and NGOs. Such partnerships, the researchers argue, enhance the prospects of girls receiving ongoing, cross-sector support, which is essential for prolonged success.

A host of other recommendations include ensuring that future projects are of sufficient length to enable girls to master the skills they are being taught (which was not consistently true of the LNGB interventions); more comprehensive career guidance to prevent girls being limited to the same handful of occupations; and ties with microfinance to help those who start their own businesses.

“Well-structured interventions like the LNGB projects naturally draw in other entities to help marginalised girls,” Rose said. “They could do so even more strategically. A single education aid project cannot reverse societal or economic constraints by itself, but it can lay the groundwork for a broader approach sustained by others, long after the original project comes to an end.”

A UK-funded programme to support out-of-school girls in low-income countries has significantly enhanced their learning, confidence, opportunities and prospects, a new report says. However, sustained, strategic and targeted investment will be needed to preserve these gains.

It is clear that we cannot just switch the support pipeline off for marginalised girls, and expect all those good results to be sustained

Pauline Rose

VSO Nepal

Young girl in Nepal

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 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.

Yes

Death tolls from climate disasters will ‘balloon’ without investment in Africa’s weather stations

fpjl2 — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 09:43:37 +0000

̽��ֱ��climate crisis is increasing the frequency and intensity of floods, droughts and heatwaves, with Africa expected to be among the global regions hit hardest.

Yet the systems and technologies across the continent that monitor and forecast weather events and changes to water levels are “missing, outmoded or malfunctioning” – leaving African populations even more exposed to climate change.

This is according to a team of risk experts and climatologists from the UK and Africa led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who warn that without major and rapid upgrades to 'hydromet infrastructure', the damage and death toll caused by climate-related disasters across Africa will “balloon”.

Writing in the journal Nature, the authors point to latest research showing that – over the last two decades – the average number of deaths caused by a flooding event in Africa is four times higher than the European and North American average per flood.

When investigating this disparity, the team looked at World Meteorological Organization (WMO) data and found the entire continent of Africa has just 6% of the number of radar stations as the US and Europe’s combined total, despite having a comparable population size and a third more land.*

Radar stations detect weather fluctuations and rainfall as well as long-term climate trends, and are vital for the forewarning of impending floods and other meteorological events. ̽��ֱ��African continent has just 37 such stations.

Moreover, WMO data shows that more than 50% of the radar stations that do currently operate across Africa are unable to produce accurate enough data to predict weather patterns for the coming days or even hours.

̽��ֱ��research team call on the international community to boost funding for systems that mitigate risks to life from climate disasters. Currently, just US $0.47 of every $100 spent on global development aid goes towards disaster risk reduction of any kind.

“ ̽��ֱ��vast gaps in Africa’s disaster reduction systems are in danger of rendering other aid investments redundant,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor, co-lead author and research affiliate at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).

“For example, there is little point investing in smallholder farms if floods are simply going to wash away seeds, agrochemicals, and machinery.”

“We need to offer all Africans a chance to reduce their exposure to climate risks by fixing this glaring hydro-meteorological blind spot, before ever more lives are lost to the effects of global heating.”

To illustrate their point, the team compare two recent category 4 storms: Tropical Cyclone Idai hit southeast Africa in 2019, and Hurricane Ida swept the eastern US in 2021. Both had wind speeds of over 200km/hour.

US populations received evacuation alerts before Ida hit land, but the limited ‘hydromet’ capabilities meant Idai caught African nations by surprise. ̽��ֱ��US death toll was under a hundred, while over a thousand Africans lost their lives.

“Multilayered hydromet systems, including weather monitoring, forecasting and early warning, are taken for granted by the Global North, and have been for decades,” said co-lead author Dr Catherine Richards, also from CSER at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“Meanwhile, the most foundational layer on which the others depend is often missing, outmoded or malfunctioning across Africa – more so than any other global region.”

“Well-funded hydromet systems must become a priority to help at-risk populations mitigate and adapt to weather-related hazards as the effects of climate change take hold,” Richards said.

̽��ֱ��team outline a series of recommendations for plugging Africa’s weather-warning gap.

Firstly, identify the most at-risk areas. “Types of climate hazard vary wildly across the continent – from the cyclones in Madagascar to the protracted droughts of east Africa,” said Tzachor.

“ ̽��ֱ��need for more weather stations across Africa is undeniable, but this must go hand-in-hand with improved satellite monitoring and major training initiatives to increase the number of skilled African meteorologists.”

̽��ֱ��latest computational techniques must be adopted, say the authors, including automated AI approaches that combine weather data with social media activity to predict disaster dynamics.

Early warning systems need to be expanded, and provide clear directions to evacuate in local dialects. “Over 80% of Africans have access to a mobile network, so text messages could be a powerful way to deliver targeted warnings,” said Richards.

Finally, major investment will be vital – and pay dividends. “ ̽��ֱ��World Bank has estimated a $1.5 billion price tag for continent-wide hydromet systems, but it would save African countries from $13 billion in asset losses and $22 billion in livelihood losses annually,” said Tzachor. “A nearly nine-to-one return on investment is surely a no-brainer.”

* In Europe and the US, there are 636 radar stations for a total population of 1.1 billion and a landmass of 20 million km². In Africa, there are just 37 for a comparable population of 1.2 billion and landmass of 30 million km².

Investment in ‘hydromet systems’ using technologies from AI to SMS would provide a nine-to-one ROI in saved lives and assets across African nations.

Well-funded hydromet systems must become a priority to help at-risk populations mitigate and adapt to weather-related hazards as the effects of climate change take hold

Catherine Richards

Getty images

Drone shot in front of a spinning weather station, Free State, South Africa

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 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.

Yes

Birds and honey badgers could be cooperating to steal from bees in parts of Africa

jg533 — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 11:27:19 +0000

̽��ֱ��tale of two charismatic species cooperating for mutual benefit has captivated naturalists for centuries – but evidence has been patchy. Researchers have now carried out the first large-scale search for evidence.