DIY Science Labs For Africa

Stop tinkering, and focus on the digital trends that really matter

- Louise Bezuidenhout

How does one train science students without equipment? As a sociologist of science specialising in African countries, this is a question I get asked with sad regularity. How, African science, technology, engineering and maths educators ask me, can the next generation of globally competitive scientists be trained using teaching laboratories that lack even the most basic equipment?

One of the most basic elements of molecular biology, for example, is to learn about DNA: how genes are expressed and converted into proteins. To do this, students must able to conduct their own experiments – and for that, they need access to a polymerase chain reaction to amplify their DNA samples. While teaching labs in the global North may have dozens of polymerase chain reaction machines, African departments may have just one per laboratory, if at all. Instead of being able to run their own DNA experiments, students in these labs have to work in groups or watch a demonstration by a tutor.