Scientific Cultures in Africa: Part 2 – Science and the Postcolony

This panel turns to postcolonial Zanzibar, Uganda, Kenya, and Mozambique. Here, panellists analyse how African vernacular knowledge challenged biomedical strategies of malaria elimination in Zanzibar; how medical cartographers studying Burkitt’s lymphoma configured Uganda as a centre for medical research; how educational computer technologies in Nairobi schools offered a path to economic growth, yet perpetuated patriarchal hierarchies; and how socialist Mozambican research in the 1970s-90s continues to define its scientific present. These papers show how science became yoked to nationalist projects, and scientific institutions began to change in the wake of decolonisation. Despite a clear emphasis on nation-building, aftershocks of colonial hierarchies are still felt within these scientific cultures. The globalisation of science has transformed parts of Africa into natural ‘laboratories’ for international research, suggesting a need for conversations between scholars working in both colonial and postcolonial periods. Together, these two panels attempt a different reading of scientific cultures in Africa, showing how science could both oppress and empower, and how indigenous and foreign forms of knowledge-making interacted and influenced one another.