SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION - The African Mirror

Sep

2023

Price wars drive adoption of cleaner cabs, carpooling in Africa

CONSUMERS love cheaper rides and there's always a driver willing to take less per ride. To cushion themselves from losses, many taxi and rideshare drivers are turning to smaller, fuel-efficient cars, hybrids, LPG-powered, and fully electric vehicles. This trend, driven by both economics and a growing environmental consciousness, has begun to reshape the taxi industry across Africa. It also comes as the continent sees a shift in attitudes to polluting staples like plastic and fossil fuels, according to a report released by a unit at bird story agency, The African Climate Awareness Report 2023. As cities across Africa expand, shared…

Jun

2023

By SETH ONYANGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

How the cookie crackdown plays to Africa’s text messaging strengths

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

AFRICAN businesses are continuing to find value in a technology that is largely being forgotten by the latest offerings of the metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies. Despite a whirlwind of digital advancement, including a surge in smartphone penetration across the continent and the emergence of world-leading mobile money solutions, Africa remains a huge market for feature phones, which offer text-based communications and are not reliant on an internet connection. Consequently, "old-school" USSD or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (known by most of us as text messaging services) have remained a cornerstone for many African companies' sales and services offerings.…

Jul

2023

By The African Mirror

Scientific fraud is rising, and automated systems won’t stop it. We need research detectives

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

FRAUD in science is alarmingly common. Sometimes researchers lie about results and invent data to win funding and prestige. Other times, researchers might pay to the stage and publish entirely bogus studies to win an undeserved pay rise – fuelling a “paper mill” industry worth an estimated €1 billion a year. ADRIAN BARNETT, Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology Some of this rubbish can be easily spotted by peer reviewers, but the peer review system has become badly stretched by ever-rising paper numbers. And there’s a new threat, as more sophisticated AI is able to generate plausible scientific data.…

Jun

2023

By The African Mirror

New evidence surfaces in South Africa regarding a small-brained human ancestor

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

EDITH MAGAK, BIRD STORY AGENCY NEW evidence by researchers in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa shows that an ancient, small-brained human cousin may have buried its dead and carved symbols into cave walls as meaning-making, behaviours considered exclusive to large-brained hominins. These short-statured species are thought to have lived in Southern Africa between 335,000 and 241,000 years ago. "We are facing a remarkable discovery here of hominids, nonhumans with brains a third of the size of humans… burying their dead, using symbols, and engaging in meaning-making activities," said anthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand…

Jun

2023

By The African Mirror

Crocodile’s ‘virgin birth’ is a first for science’s history books

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

STORIES of virgin births, where young are produced without fertilisation, have been told throughout history. Mars the ancient Roman god, Horus the ancient Egyptian god and Qi from ancient Chinese mythology were all born to virgins. But virgin births actually do happen in the natural world. Author LOUISE GENTLE, Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University The first evidence of a virgin birth in crocodiles has been reported in a captive American crocodile, Crocodylus acutus, who was housed on her own for 16 years in a zoo in Costa Rica. She laid a clutch of 14 eggs, of which…

Jun

2023

By The African Mirror

Remembering South Africa’s “Grand Geek” Barry Dwolatzky – engineer and programming pioneer

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

TO some of his former students, Professor Barry Dwolatzky was the “Grand Geek” – a name of which he was very proud. But Barry, who passed away in Johannesburg, South Africa on 16 May 2023, was much more than a computer geek. He was also a leader and a visionary in the field of software engineering in South Africa. Author ESTELLE TRENGOVE, Associate Professor in electrical engineering, University of the Witwatersrand At the time of his passing, he was 71 years old. He was by then retired from academia and held the title of Emeritus Professor at the University of…

May

2023

By SALAM TITINCHI

From waste to clean water: tiny carbon particles can do the job

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

MANY futuristic novels and films have explored what the world might look like without water. But water scarcity isn’t a problem for the far-off future: it’s already here. In its 2021 report, UN-Water outlined the scale of the crisis: 2.3 billion people live in water-stressed countries and 733 million of those people are in “high and critically water-stressed countries”. In 2018 Cape Town, where I live and conduct my research, residents found themselves staring down “day zero”, when household water supplies would run dry. Good rains spared the South African city, but now other parts of the country face similarly…

May

2023

By The African Mirror

From enormous elephants to tiny shrews: how mammals shape and are shaped by Africa’s landscapes

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

AFRICA is the world’s most diverse continent for large mammals such as antelopes, zebras and elephants. The heaviest of these large mammals top the scales at over one ton and are referred to as megafauna. In fact, it’s the only continent that has not seen a mass extinction of these megafauna. Author ARA MONADJEM, Full Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Eswatini The continent’s megafauna community includes the world’s largest terrestrial mammal, the African elephant. Adult African bush elephants can weigh as much as 6 tons. Other giants across African continent include hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses and giraffes. So,…

Feb

2023

By The African Mirror

We pitted ChatGPT against tools for detecting AI-written text, and the results are troubling

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

AS the “chatbot wars” rage in Silicon Valley, the growing proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools specifically designed to generate human-like text has left many baffled. Educators in particular are scrambling to adjust to the availability of software that can produce a moderately competent essay on any topic at a moment’s notice. Should we go back to pen-and-paper assessments? Increasing exam supervision? Ban the use of AI entirely? Authors ARMIN ALIMARDANI, Lecturer, University of Wollongong EMMA A. JANE, Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney All these and more have been proposed. However, none of these less-than-ideal measures would be needed if educators…

Jan

2023

By The African Mirror

Artificial intelligence in South Africa comes with special dilemmas – plus the usual risks

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

WHEN people think about artificial intelligence (AI), they may have visions of the future. But AI is already here. At its base, it is the recreation of aspects of human intelligence in computerised form. Like human intelligence, it has wide applications. Voice-operated personal assistants like Siri, self-driving cars, and text and image generators all use AI. It also curates our social media feeds. It helps companies to detect fraud and hire employees. It’s used to manage livestock, enhance crop yields and aid medical diagnoses. Author EMILE ORMOND, PhD candidate, University of South Africa Alongside its growing power and its potential,…