Associate Professor February grew up in Cape Town. Classified as coloured, he was denied access to many facilities in the city, but not to the mountains or the public parks, and from an early age, he spent hours exploring Table Mountain. One thing led to another, from the hikes on Table Mountain he soon progressed to a more vertical world. While some of his friends were being pulled towards joining the gangs that have become a powerful social feature of the Cape Flats, he and his brother were developing their rock-climbing ability.

It wasn’t long before his abilities on the rock face became evident and he embarked on a semi-professional life as a climber. He was invited to participate in first ascents of vertical rock spires in many parts of Africa, from Namibia through Cameroon and Mali to Kenya. He has also climbed extensively in North America, Africa and Europe and worked on two climbing films for the BBC: one in the Cederberg and the other in Scotland.

One of South Africa’s most iconic climbers has directed his passions at researching the Cederberg’s iconic trees.

Parallel to Associate Professor February’s passion for climbing, he began to develop an interest in plants. Spending much of his time outdoors in the Western Cape, which is renowned for its unique and diverse fynbos flora, he became interested in the ecological diversity confronting him. Among his favourite local climbing spots are the Cederberg mountains, located in a provincial reserve just 200 km north of Cape Town. From the very first trips to the Cederberg some 40 years ago, Associate Professor February was fascinated by the iconic Cederberg-namesake, the Clanwilliam cedar (Widdringtonia cedarbergensis). The Cederberg Wilderness area was declared a provincial reserve in 1972 with the express purpose of protecting the trees. 

Despite this protection, these trees are listed as an endangered species, threatened with extinction if the causal factors for its decline continue to operate. Another Widdringtonia species, the Mulanje cedar (Widdringtonia whyteii), which is the national tree of Malawi, is also threatened with extinction in the wild. Like the Clanwilliam cedar, the Mulanje cedar is endemic to a small mountain range, Mount Mulanje, about 150 km from Blantyre. The Mulanje cedar is much bigger than its South African cousin and the biggest danger it faces is from woodcutters.

In 2012, Associate Professor February was awarded a PERC grant for a comparative study of the South African and Malawian cedars, teaming up with colleagues from South Africa and Malawi, from within academia and outside it.

The project has two aims. The first is to establish the viability of current sapling initiatives by examining the health of seed stocks and their ability to regenerate: it is estimated that fewer than one in 1 000 seedlings will mature into a seed-producing tree. 

The second feature is to explore the relationship between the trees and surrounding human populations. In both South Africa and Malawi, the tree is an important economic asset. In the Cederberg, it has been used to attract tourists, who provide labour and entrepreneurial opportunities to local communities. In Malawi, its wood is central to local economies because it is resistant to weather, rot and termite damage, and is therefore favoured for construction. While the tree faces different challenges in the two countries, it is important to attend to both the botanical and social dimensions of its place in Africa’s mountains.

Associate Professor February wants to ensure that the next generation of climbers will be able to appreciate the beauty of the African cedars and he hopes that his project will bring hope to local communities, while at the same time safe-guarding these beautiful trees.

Featured image: Associate Professor Ed February climbing Mount Arapiles.

Singled out for his contribution to changing the way Africans think about their own continent, Dr Chirikure seeks to debunk the myth that there was no science and technology in Africa before colonialism. The most important challenge in this research is that some of the dominant frameworks were constructed using non-African experiences and were incorporated locally without much modification. This calls for new perspectives informed by the African experience or local knowledge. “Most knowledge is acquired in a Western way but, before then, what were Africans doing?” he asks. “How much do we know about the mining that was being done, about the spears that made Shaka Zulu so successful?” 

With a doctorate in archaeology, Dr Chirikure focuses primarily on pre-colonial technology in indigenous mining and metalworking in Africa. “I combine archaeological, anthropological and historical approaches with standard metallurgical and mineralogical techniques to investigate pre-colonial metal extractive technologies and the associated socio-cultural processes,” he says.

And it appears to be an approach that is working. He has turned up many revelatory findings in his research career, including the fact that not only were Southern Africans prospecting and mining to extract metals to use locally long before the colonial era, but they were also exporting the knowledge to China and to countries on the Indian Ocean.

Dr Shadreck Chirikure

Currently, Dr Chirikure is investigating the contributions of metallurgy to early state formation and inter-continental contact in Southern Africa. Using the Shona concept of rotational succession, where power moves between “houses” or brothers upon the death of the incumbent king or chief, he and his collaborators have argued that there were many centres, rather than one major capital, in the region. With a PERC Africa Knowledge grant, he has initiated a project at the archaeological site of Mapela in Zimbabwe, long believed to be a subsidiary within the grand state of Mapungubwe. The last archaeologist to work at Mapela was Peter Garlake in 1966. New excavations are indicating that Mapela was much bigger than previously thought. It has yielded thousands of glass beads, which suggests that it was a thriving trade centre. This work is a collaborative project with researchers from the UK, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Dr Chirikure has also just been awarded a National Research Foundation (NRF) Blue Skies grant to study Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe and other related places to explore new models for, and evaluate the contribution of metals to, nascent urbanism in the region. In this work he will draw on the expertise of Professor Sue Parnell (African Centre for Cities) on African urban systems, while professors John Compton (Geological Sciences) and Mike Meadows (Environmental and Geographical Science) will offer guidance on the contributions of climate change to state formation.

The most important challenge in this research is that some of the dominant frameworks were constructed using non-African experiences and were incorporated locally without much modification.

Dr Chirikure came to UCT as a postdoctoral fellow in 2007. He was enrolled into the Emerging Researcher Programme (ERP) early in his academic career, working with the co-ordinator for the science, engineering and technology stream at the time, Dr Dianne Bond. For Dr Bond, three things stand out as she recalls her encounters with Dr Chirikure: her immediate sense that here was someone who was clearly going places, the fact that he availed himself of the opportunities provided by the ERP for new staff members, and his constant gratitude for the tools, notably in the form of research-related information, that smoothed his path in developing a robust research profile. ERP senior co-ordinator Dr Lyn Holness reflects: “It was with a great sense of pride that those of us working in the ERP were able to welcome Shadreck as the 2014 PERC Associate. Shadreck, you see, has done all the things we dream of for emerging researchers!”

Aside from being recognised in the Mail & Guardian list, Dr Chirikure has been awarded a Mandela Mellon Fellowship, enabling him to spend time at Harvard University, and was invited by Cambridge University Press to write a book on his research. He also sits on the editorial boards of three journals, is a founding member of the South African Young Academy of Science and received a prestigious P-rating from the NRF in 2012.

Apparently, Dr Chirikure was once so shy he was afraid to look his lecturers in the eye. Now he is an outspoken campaigner for African research. In his capacity as PERC Associate, he supports PERC’s work to develop the research careers of mid-career academic staff at UCT, specifically encouraging the development of research initiatives that reflect the university’s location in Africa and in a more broadly developing context. In May 2013, he convened a round-table discussion on “Afropolitan Research Opportunities and Constraints: Creating knowledge for transforming and empowering Africa.” 

“Africa is promising in that there are so many avenues that can be explored, thereby transforming the continent into a competitive global knowledge producer,” he says. 

Featured image: The site of the Kingdom of Mapungubwe, a pre-colonial state in Southern Africa, which is now a World Heritage Site.

Dying to be white

Research shows that as many as one in three women in South Africa routinely use skin-lightening creams – this despite the risk of cancer and other types of skin disease associated with their use.

Understanding what drives women to make this choice is at the heart of a new interdisciplinary study led by Dr Susan Levine, senior lecturer in the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics.

The project will see medical doctors, social scientists and scholars from the humanities working together to draw critical attention to the visible and invisible harms associated with the use of skin-lightening creams.

Over the last few years, there has been a flood of cheap, affordable over-the-counter products for lightening the skin. According to Levine, the majority of these contain a mixture of compounds including mercury, corticosteroids and hydroquinone (HQ) to enhance the bleaching effect. Despite legislation that bans the use of HQ in concentrations of more than 2% in the USA, creams in Africa are being found containing up to 15%.

High concentrations of HQ accumulate over time and can lead to severe, irreparable damage to skin through a condition called exogenous ochronosis (EO). There were 756 reported cases of EO in Africa recorded in 2007, of which 2.6% were found in Senegal, 15% in Nigeria and a staggering 82.4% in South Africa. Little wonder then that Levine and her associates are so eager to wage war on these products and their use. “We believe that our interdisciplinary approach will allow us to alter perceptions regarding the use and abuse of skin lighteners, as well as to highlight the persistence of racial aesthetics of beauty,” she says.

The project aims firstly to assess scientifically a number of the currently cheaper, illegal available formulations and the effect they have on human skin cells, and secondly to create a database of skin-lightener products. The database will also highlight global trends in cosmetic marketing of HQ-based creams and use this information to design a questionnaire for future anthropological studies. A third goal of the study is to conduct ethnographic research on the complex motivations around why and how women are investing in skin-lightening creams.

The research will contribute to UCT’s drive to constitute medical humanities for Africa as a field of study and will build on the momentum of a successful seminar series in the medical humanities in 2013 hosted by GIPA (Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS). “This research brings together the foundation of true interdisciplinary research that brings into focus the parallel needs for qualitative and quantitative research methods for solving the pressing health needs in South Africa,” says Levine.

“We are hoping that, by combining all the genetic analysis of the structural components and of the cell signalling regulation, we will be able to get to a model where we can identify the most important biological role players in injury susceptibility,” she explains. This has implications for sports professionals in that, if it turns out they are, by virtue of their genes, at increased risk of a soft tissue injury, they can adapt their training accordingly – to strengthen and not put unnecessary strain on tendons or ligaments.

While currently working with elite athletes, Dr September says the research findings could also be extended to benefit other patients with soft tissue injuries and also to address occupational injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome. “I think it’s the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “We haven’t yet looked at the potential effect on other clinical patients, but there are soft tissues throughout your body, so if this risk factor is high, it could have an effect on other clinical phenotypes, such as recovery of a patient from surgery.”

Dr September is now also turning her attention to the topical issue of concussion risks. “We are trying to see, are there genetic elements that contribute to your risk of sustaining a concussion, but more importantly, are there genetic elements which influence your recovery? We want to identify a biomarker which could be used, together with clinical parameters, to diagnose a concussion incident. People don’t always present with clinical symptoms, and they don’t necessarily correlate with the severity of the concussion. So if we can come up with a blood biomarker that confirms that a patient has concussion it would assist with treatment and recovery.”

With a PhD in classical human molecular genetics from UCT, Dr September joined the ESSM in 2005 as a postdoctoral research fellow, drawn to the unit by the pioneering work of Professor Malcolm Collins, head of the Department of Human Biology. “I met him, I collaborated with him, and I thought: ‘This is a dynamic person, I want to be part of that team,’” she says.

She has also benefitted from the Emerging Researcher Programme (ERP), saying it has given her the inspiration to “become bold in my thinking. Just from their excitement about your project and CV you get excited about yourself. You start getting confidence in yourself, which gives you momentum and you want to go with it.”

On a practical level, the ERP has enabled her to publish several papers as a lead author, thereby upping her outputs and helping her to secure her C2 NRF-rating in early 2014.

Dr Verena Bitzer

Dr Verena Bitzer joined the Graduate School of Business during 2013 as a postdoctoral fellow looking into the role of cross-sector partnerships and co-innovation in solving complex social and environmental challenges. With a PhD from Utrecht University in the Netherlands on cross-sector partnerships and global value chains, Bitzer has done extensive work in innovation in African food chains at Wageningen University.

In the face of pressing socio-ecological problems, a lack of physical resources and an increasingly complex and competitive market, the world’s economies have become more knowledge-intensive – value is created by the application of knowledge rather than by investment in hard assets. And the key to unlocking the economic and social value of knowledge is through innovation. “We need to see innovation as an investment, not an expense; as a process that focuses on providing a tangible benefit,” says Dr Bitzer.

But Dr Bitzer says that for innovation to be successful, we need to realise that it is a collective activity, generally involving many different people and organisations. “The potential of partnerships for innovation is obvious – innovation emerges when combining different sources of knowledge and experience. I’m interested in how collaborative processes create the interfaces necessary for generating innovative solutions to complex societal problems and what conditions are ideal for such processes to flourish.”

Dr Liz Lewis

After many years as a business executive, Dr Liz Lewis decided to switch track. An interest in legal studies was beckoning and led to her obtaining an LLB from UNISA in 2008. Soon afterwards she returned to her alma mater (Lewis has a BA and an HDE from UCT) and embarked on a master’s degree in the Department of Public Law, which was upgraded to a PhD in 2013.

Her area of expertise is international law: specifically, the interaction between international, national and subnational law. Dr Lewis chose this field because she is interested in both international law and subnational systems such as customary law. She feels strongly that these regimes should not be disconnected, and her present research is therefore aimed at developing judicial and legislative models that will allow customary and international law to enrich each other in a harmonious and beneficial manner. For example, the customary macro-cosmic world view, founded, amongst other things, on respect for the environment, could be explored to enhance the international environmental discourse, says Dr Lewis.

Dr Lewis currently has a postdoctoral fellowship grant from the University Research Committee and says that if she did not have this funding she would not be able to continue with her research. “I intend to make the most of this wonderful opportunity. The fellowship has given me extra motivation to bring new depth to my research,” she says.

Drawing on the partners involved in the Carnegie project, the four universities will increase collaboration through supportive supervision relationships, by encouraging fellows to build networks with their counterparts in the other partner universities, and in supporting Carnegie graduates – academically and professionally – when they return to their home institutions. Over the length of the project, almost 100 new academics will be produced for the continent. To date, it has graduated 21 PhDs, and seven postdoctoral fellows have completed their tenures. At the time of writing, three Carnegie scholars had secured academic positions and a further one was about to take up his academic appointment.

Today’s academics face a range of challenges due to the increasing complexity of the world and the research environment. The competition is not just faced by individuals, but by universities, countries and entire continents, argues Professor Danie Visser, Deputy Vice-Chancellor with responsibility for research. “You can’t be competitive as a country or a continent if you don’t have strong universities that drive research.”

At UCT, participants are selected from three fields where lucrative career options in the private and public sectors mean that an academic career is often not the first choice (clinicians, engineers and economists) and where the research is particularly pertinent to Africa.

“We are trying to foster a community of people so that we can get that sense that we are doing something significant for our continent,” says Professor Visser. A quick scan of Africa-specific research being undertaken by current Carnegie scholars demonstrates the importance of this work. Projects range from the economics of tobacco control in Zambia to property rights in Nigeria; from climate change vulnerability in Tanzania to the relationship between health and the labour market in South Africa; and include multiple research projects on malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS. 

Above photo: Some of the 2014 generation of Carnegie scholars (l-r) Back row: Faridah Chebet Chemisto, Kabani Matongo, Adérijo Monjane, Aleyo Chabeda and Brian Kullin. Third row: Philemon Arito, David Fadiran, Yusuf Agabi, Sulemana Mahawiya, Imuentinyan Aivinhenyo, David Ikumi, Roslyn Ray and Adeola Oyenubi. Second row: John Okedi, Rodrick Katete, Fredrick Nindo, Munya Musvosvi, Trust Mpofu, Hazvinei Tsitsi Tamuka Moyo, Krupa Naran and Zanele Ditse. Front row: Threza Mtenga, Mamello Nchake, Chijioke Nwosu, Elizabeth Lwanga Nanziri, Mhbuba Shifa and Nina Wasuna.

Filling in the knowledge gaps

Dr Tolu Oni

Carnegie fellow Tolu Oni, a senior research medical officer affiliated to the Clinical Infectious Disease Research Initiative (CIDRI) in the Faculty of Health Sciences, is determined to make a contribution through her research to improving the health of urban populations in Africa – especially for the poor.

According to Oni, rapid urbanisation in Africa has been accompanied by changes in cultural, social and lifestyle behaviour resulting in reduced physical activity and other unhealthy dietary and behavioural patterns, which has led to a rise in the incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes and heart disease. At the same time, there is an increasing overlap between these chronic conditions and infectious diseases, such as TB and HIV/AIDS, which is creating a perfect storm for public health that requires further investigation. 

Poor people living in urban settings, fuelled by a high prevalence of obesity, are disproportionately affected, she says. 

“A scarcity of good-quality data on how these diseases overlap and interact and their interaction with external or environmental factors is a significant barrier to designing appropriate prevention and control strategies,” says Oni. “Many of these factors are beyond the healthcare remit, necessitating involvement of all relevant disciplines to ensure informed, healthier public policies.”

This is where she hopes her research will make a contribution. With qualifications in medicine, public health and epidemiology, Oni began her medical training at the University College London Medical School and went on to complete postgraduate studies in internal medicine together with HIV medicine in the UK and Australia. In 2007, she moved to Cape Town to work in HIV/TB research, completing her doctorate in the Clinical Epidemiology of HIV-associated TB at Imperial College London.

It was during her research in Cape Town that she became interested in the rise of NCDs and their interaction with chronic infectious diseases. She is currently investigating the association between TB and diabetes, as well as the epidemiology of NCD risk factors in HIV-infected persons. 

Understanding the root of economic problems

With a dream of studying economics, Ethiopian-born Mhbuba Shifa’s passion arose from a deep-rooted curiosity to understand the reasons behind the economic problems at home.

Her academic career started with a business science degree in statistics at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. This progressed into a full bursary for her master’s in economic science at UCT. Shifa became a Carnegie scholarship recipient in 2011 and she was awarded a further scholarship for the following two years to study for a PhD in economics.

Shifa feels privileged and touched to be a Carnegie scholar; it has also had practical advantages: “Receiving support from the Carnegie Corporation has developed my career as an independent researcher, providing me with more protected research time.”

The Carnegie Corporation’s support allows Shifa the access and capacity to delve into her research interests in Ethiopia, which include rural livelihoods, land and labour markets, agricultural productivity, poverty and inequality.

Woodland spoke about his research into the development of a fluorescent probe to detect free haem, an iron-containing compound that forms the non-protein part of haemoglobin (red blood cells) and some other biological molecules. Free haem can be a very toxic molecule and has been implicated in a number of pathological conditions, such as malaria.

Science Slams – inspired by Poetry Slams, in which poets compete against each other by reciting their poetry – were developed in Germany in 2006 and have since gained popularity around the world. Woodland was one of six German and South African postgraduate and postdoctoral presenters, who each had 10 minutes to take science out of the lab and promote its everyday applications.

Acknowledgment at the Science Slam was not the only feather in Woodland’s cap in 2013. After attaining success during the South African leg, he was chosen to present his research (this time in only three minutes) at the Falling Walls Lab in Berlin. There he won third place in the Young Innovator of the Year competition. A reward for this achievement was an opportunity to present the same talk at the Falling Walls Conference, billed as the “international conference on future breakthroughs in science and society”.

“I am passionate about science and about this country. It is imperative that we get people interested in, and inspired, by science in South Africa. We live in a scientific age. Everyone ought to be familiar with basic scientific ideas and, more importantly, ought to think critically about the world and the information they are fed,” maintains Woodland.

Making waves

Michelle Knights, a PhD student in Cosmology and Astrophysics, was the winner of South Africa’s first ever FameLab competition and represented South Africa at the FameLab International semi-finals, where she talked about the use of pulsars to demonstrate gravitational waves, which was postulated by Einstein, and is one of the areas that will be studied by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project currently under development in South Africa.

IRISATM-TB (InterGam Rapid Immuno Suspension Assay) is the first commercial product to emerge from Antrum Biotech, a company that grew out of the research led by UCT’s Professor Keertan Dheda. The groundbreaking tool will enable health workers to detect EPTB by measuring human interferon gamma (a type of protein that plays a role in immunity) in biological body fluids. The test provides a rapid and accurate result within two hours, enabling swift response and treatment of the disease. TB is responsible for an estimated 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year and is the most common cause of death in South Africa. While EPTB accounts for just 15% of TB cases, this estimate increases to 50% in high-HIV-prevalence settings.

UCT converted its licence agreement with Antrum Biotech, which was formed in 2008, to an equity stake in late 2013, thereby assigning the IP to the company and paving the way for a significant investment from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). The company is now co-owned by UCT and the IDC.

The next step is to enter further larger-scale clinical trial testing in 2014. The Medical Research Council-funded trial will have Professor Bongani Mayosi, head of the Department of Medicine, as its principal investigator.

The UCT team was named one of the top five initiatives worldwide for their project, Khusela – a low-cost fire-detection device for informal housing – and took the GSVC People’s Choice Award in the global round, competing against hundreds of entries and winning out against 18 finalists in the last round.

The GSVC is the world’s pre-eminent social business plan competition, providing aspiring entrepreneurs with mentoring, exposure and prize money to transform their business ideas into positive real-world impact.   

Khusela, which means “protect” in Xhosa, is a low-cost fire-detection device and integrated alert service designed for shack-dwellers worldwide. In South Africa, there are an average of 10 shack fires a day, with someone dying in a shack fire every other day, according to Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African shack-dwellers’ movement. 

“Our proactive early-warning system networks individuals within communities and with the authorities to mitigate the loss of life and property caused by shack fires – a global human tragedy,” says Francois Petousis, co-founder of Khusela, who is currently undertaking a master’s degree in inclusive innovation at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB). “There are one billion shack/slum-dwellers across the globe, and that is set to soar to 1.4 billion by 2020.”

Khusela is based on the engineering honours thesis of Petousis. The team further consists of Samuel Ginsberg, David Gluckman, Emily Vining, Max Basler and Paul Mesarcik. 

Dubbed the Solution Space, the area is meant to serve as a link between students, social inventors, entrepreneurs, foundations, government and industry players, allowing collaboration to generate new and creative ways to solve issues facing the continent.

GSB director Professor Walter Baets says that the space is a manifestation of the business school of the future. “Business schools need to shift to meet the needs of an unpredictable and unequal world. This means we need to move away from just training MBAs and towards getting involved in creating new business solutions for the world. We need to be more hands-on by turning out real solutions to real problems. And because complex challenges demand collaboration and partnership, the space will be a nexus between industry, government, academia and civil society.”

The multi-million-rand initiative, which is a prelude to Workshop 17 (a joint initiative of the V&A Waterfront and the GSB), received funding from the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Fund and the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The SAB Foundation has also partnered with the GSB with a funding commitment of R1 million as seed capital for promising social entrepreneurs.