Big Science Comes to Africa, Kenya

For many decades, Africa has often been perceived as a place of hunger, famine and disease, where the only valuable form of research should be in food security and health. In this (mis) representation of Africa, the proponents hold the view that Africa is not a place for world-class science and research, but a destination for brief, small scale, short-term targeted projects without longterm returns, and a dumpsite 'market' for obsolete and third-class goods and electronics. I refuse to buy into this. Whereas most Africa nations lack enough resources and strong commitment to promote good science, some credit must, however, be given wherever it's due. Africa has woken up and a big tornado is on it's way, one that will swallow the pessimists still engraved in the past! And moreover, if the technological, infrastructural and economic gains made in the last decade are anything to go by, plus the recently won "African World Cup" that will see construction of the world's largest radio telescope in African soil, then it seems to be indeed business unusual that big science is making it's way to Africa!

In Kenya for example, technological fingerprints are already available for everyone-who cares- to see. From the highly innovative mobile money transfer system M-pesa, mobile technological applications such as M-shamba, M-banking et cetera, to the hi-tech 'seeding' labs being established in preparation for the envisioned Konza technology city, argued to be the next Africa's  Silicon Savanna and the now available government funding towards innovative research, Kenya is-despite a few challenges-, indeed showing signs of the required momentum necessary to turn her into a regional and African technology and educational hub.

However, in this article, I discuss a special form of big science that is making it's way to Africa, and which, harbors a huge potential in transforming Africa into an international scientific hub and a competitive partner in world-class scientific research. First things first, let  me begin with the basics. The science of astronomy allows us to look back in time to the beginning of the Cosmos because the light from distant stars, galaxies and other objects in the universe takes a long time to journey through space before reaching our telescopes (us). We therefore see these distant objects (today) as they were very long time ago; astronomically speaking, “we look back in time”. What this means is that if something was to happen to the Sun now (let's say it switches off!) we can only know this after eight minutes because light from the Sun takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth. We say that the distance to the Sun is eight light minutes. On the other hand, if you wanted to see the nearest star Proxima Centauri as it is now, then you will need to stand and remain where you are for 4 years, because it's only by then that the light emitted today would have arrived! You can then agree with me that by then you would already be four years behind and hence lagging back in time. This is the same principle that astronomers apply to know about everything else in the universe.

As many of you might already know from international news, following months of a highly energized contest between the bids of  South Africa and it's 8 African partner countries among them; Kenya, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana, Madagascar and Mauritius, and, Australia jointly with New Zealand, a landmark breath-taking decision was made last month that saw Africa chosen to host about a third of what would be the world's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (abbreviated as SKA) with Australia and New Zealand hosting the remaining part.

What is the SKA?

The SKA will be a revolutionary radio telescope that will be used to make pictures of radio waves instead of light waves, and will consist of thousands of radio wave receptor elements called “antennas”, distributed across the continent, linked together by a highly sophisticated technique in radio astronomy called interferometry-that itself worn a Nobel prize in physics.

The antennae or dishes of the SKA, will be spread across the African continent, across to Australia and New Zealand, so that the sum of effective collecting area of the antennae will be equivalent to a single dish having an aperture with an area of one million square meters, making it the largest and most sensitive radio telescope ever built, and over 50 times more sensitive and will allow mapping of the sky more than one thousand times greater faster than the world's largest instruments. .

The Technology of the SKA

To increase it's sensitivity and help provide high resolution images of stars, galaxies and other astronomical objects, the SKA will employ a very special design that will see a concentration of most antennae in a central core while the rest will be arranged to form a spiral pattern such that the spacing will gradually increase from the central core outwards.

The kind of science that will be done by the SKA

The SKA will detect signals in the radio frequency band from space. It will provide astronomers with an insight to: how the first stars and galaxies formed, how magnetic fields formed in the early universe and how this influenced galaxy formation, the nature of dark matter (the non-interacting invisible form of matter that forms about 25% of the universe) and dark energy (the mysterious form of energy that is tearing the universe apart and forms about 74% of the universe), test the famous Einstein's theory of general relativity and hence the nature of gravity, and, last but not least, search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

How much will it cost?

The total approximate budget for the SKA is about 1,500 million Euros, but it could be more

How will Africa benefit from the SKA?

The design, development, construction and operation of the SKA will be done in collaboration with local and selected foreign industries, likely to foster skills transfer and development of local industries and skilled manpower.

Being an international project, the SKA will attract world top scientists and expatriates to Africa hence not only leading to the much needed skills transfer into the continent but also attracting back some of the Africa's top scientists abroad.

Governments will be compelled to train a massive number of engineers, astronomers, software engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and technicians which will boost the amount of skilled manpower.

The massive data handling, transfer, processing and storage will require high performance supercomputers and very fast internet leading to improved internet speeds, data handling and signal processing technologies and interconnectivity.