The National Institutes of Health is investing about $74.5 million over five years to advance data science, catalyze innovation and spur health discoveries across Africa.

Under its new Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program, the NIH is issuing 19 awards to support research and training activities.

DS-I Africa is an NIH Common Fund program that is supported by the Office of the Director and 11 NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices.

Awards will establish a consortium consisting of a data science platform and coordinating center, seven research hubs, seven data science research training programs and four projects focused on studying the ethical, legal and social implications of data science research. Awardees have a robust network of partnerships across the African continent and in the United States, including numerous national health ministries, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and other academic institutions.

“This initiative has generated tremendous enthusiasm in all sectors of Africa’s biomedical research community,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “Big data and artificial intelligence have the potential to transform the conduct of research across the continent, while investing in research training will help to support Africa’s future data science leaders and ensure sustainable progress in this promising field.”

The University of Cape Town (UCT) will develop and manage the initiative’s open data science platform and coordinating center, building on previous NIH investments in UCT’s data and informatics capabilities made through the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) program. UCT will provide a flexible, scalable platform for the DS-I Africa researchers, so they can find and access data, select tools and workflows, and run analyses through collaborative workspaces. UCT will also administer and support core resources, as well as coordinate consortium activities.

The research hubs, all of which are led by African institutions, will apply novel approaches to data analysis and AI to address critical health issues.

The research training programs, which leverage partnerships with U.S. institutions, will create multi-tiered curricula to build skills in foundational health data science, with options ranging from master’s and doctoral degree tracks, to postdoctoral training and faculty development. A mix of in-person and remote training will be offered to build skills in multi-disciplinary topics such as applied mathematics, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical informatics, analytics, computational omics, biomedical imaging, machine intelligence, computational paradigms, computer science and engineering.

Researchers have discovered tropical forests in Africa have been sequestering far more carbon than previously known. As they are also rapidly now being cleared for multiple uses, their days in helping save the planet may be numbered.

Scientists at the University of York who have been investigating what are called Africa’s montane forests, those forests located in the tropics, recently discovered those ranges have been acting as a much bigger carbon sink for the planet than earlier investigations had shown.

The current calculations show those ranges are drawing in an estimated 150 tons of carbon per hectare. Put another way, that means every hectare of montane forest left standing in Africa saves the equivalent of CO2 emissions produced by a group of 100 homes consuming electricity at normal average rates for a year.

The data used in the study came from extensive forest inventory data from the AfriMont and AfriTRON plot networks, which cover information provided within 13 countries in Africa. The data is available at afritron.org and is curated at www.forestplots.net.

The study, just published in the journal Nature, found that African mountain forests store more carbon per unit area than the Amazon rainforest and are similar in structure to lowland forests in Africa. Existing guidelines for African mountain forests – which assume 89 tons of carbon per hectare – greatly underestimate their role in global climate regulation.

The international team also investigated how much tropical mountain forest had been lost from the African continent in the past 20 years. They found that 0.8 million hectares have been lost, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Ethiopia, emitting over 450 million tonnes of CO₂₂ into the atmosphere. If current deforestation rates continue, a further 0.5 million hectares of these forests would be lost by 2030.

Lead author Dr Aida Cuni-Sanchez, from the University of York’s Department of Environment and Geography and at Norwegian University of Life Sciences, said: “The results are surprising because the climate in mountains would be expected to lead to low carbon forests.

“The lower temperatures of mountains and the long periods they are covered by clouds should slow tree growth, while strong winds and steep unstable slopes might limit how big trees can get before they fall over and die.

“But unlike other continents, in Africa we found the same carbon store per unit area in lowland and mountain forests. Contrary to what we expected, large trees remain abundant in mountain forests, and these large trees (defined as having diameters over 70 cm) store a lot of carbon.”

Scientists measured 72,000 trees in 44 mountain sites in 12 African countries, from Guinea to Ethiopia, and south to Mozambique. In each mountain site they established plots where they recorded the diameter, height, and species of every tree.

Researchers said that better knowledge about how much carbon mountain forests store is especially important for the ten African nations where the only tropical forests they have are those found on mountains.

“While we know what makes African forests special, we don’t yet know why they are different. It is possible that in Africa, the presence of large herbivores such as elephants plays an important role in mountain forest ecology, as these large animals disperse seeds and nutrients, and eat small trees creating space for others to grow larger, but this requires further investigation,” Dr Cuni-Sanchez added.

Co-author Dr Phil Platts, from York’s Department of Environment and Geography and the IUCN’s Climate Change Specialist Group, said: “About five per cent of Africa’s tropical mountain forests have been cleared since 2000, and in some countries the rate exceeds 20 per cent. Besides their importance for climate regulation, these forests are habitats for many rare and endangered species, and they provide very important water services to millions of people downstream”.

Most African nations have committed large amounts of land to forest restoration under the Bonn Challenge. Although forest restoration is important to mitigate climate change, avoiding deforestation is a greater priority.

Co-author Dr Martin Sullivan, at the Department of Natural Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, added: “Previous carbon estimates for tropical mountain forests in Africa were much lower than the values we report in our study.

“We hope that these new data will encourage carbon finance mechanisms towards avoided deforestation in tropical mountains.  As outlined in the Paris Agreement, reducing tropical deforestation in both lowland and mountain forests must be a priority.”

Co-author Dr Gerard Imani, at the Department of Biology, Université Oficielle de Bukavu in DR Congo, added: “Carbon finance mechanisms could help improve conservation interventions on the ground – even within protected areas, deforestation, forest degradation and defaunation remain a challenge.”

The paper, “High aboveground carbon stock of African tropical montane forests,” by Aida Cuni-Sanchez, Martin J. P. Sullivan, and Etienne Zibera, was published in the 25 August 2021 issue of Nature.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced the award of a $4.5 million cooperative agreement with Pact Inc., an international nonprofit organization, to combat child labor in mica-producing communities in Madagascar.

In the Anôsy region where mica mining occurs – where the poverty rate is 96.7 percent – an ongoing drought has contributed to a near famine. The coronavirus pandemic and the drought have devastated the region’s agricultural harvests and increased the cost of staple foods. The price of mica and the incomes of the families who mine it have also decreased as a result of the pandemic. Amid these dire conditions, Malagasy families feel that they have no choice but to send their children to work in and around the mines to buy food and fulfill basic needs.

An estimated 10,000 children endure unsafe working conditions currently in Madagascar’s informal mica industry. Typically, boys work underground digging to extract mica ore; some have suffocated to death in poorly ventilated mines. Above ground, girls haul and process mica and face frequent pressure from mica collectors to engage in sex for money. These children often develop respiratory illnesses from mica dust particles. All of this happens in a country where inadequate labor laws are poorly enforced.

Companies in China buy Madagascar’s mica for use in manufacturing a variety of products, including automobiles, cosmetics and electronics, many of which find their way to U.S. consumers.

Administered by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, Pact Inc.’s Madagascar Shines project will:

• Improve resiliency of mining families in mica-producing communities by providing approximately 1,800 children with educational services and 2,200 adults with livelihood services.
• Increase the capacity of government officials to coordinate the child protection measures in the mica supply chain, including establishing a code of conduct for mica mining.
• Support the efforts of civil society organizations and the media to improve public awareness around the issue of child labor in the mica supply chain.
• Promote the formalization of the mica sector and design a traceability system, fostering a sustainable mining industry that does not use child labor.

Fundació Fluidra has announced it will undertake a new project consisting of building a swimming pool at a school in Thiaroye, on the outskirts of Senegalese capital Dakar, with the aim of helping over 2,000 children from the city learn to swim.

The project will be implemented through the partnership between KAG25 (a corporate vehicle channeling aid in Senegal), Fundació Fluidra, Fluidra Export, and Sensec, a local construction firm and Fluidra customer. Fundació Fluidra will fund the project, Fluidra Export will supply the necessary materials, and Sensec will be tasked with building it.

The pool will be semi-Olympic in size (25 x 12.5 meters), enabling all types of activities, including swimming competitions. It will be fitted with the latest connectivity technologies, optimizing operation, maintenance, and efficiency.

The pool managers will be able to tap all the related metrics to make it more sustainable and safer. A connected pool simplifies maintenance and facilitates social action.

The plan has been developed from the previous links between Fundació Fluidra and the Écoles Pies of West Africa partnering through the KAG25 joint venture to provide job training in intensive farming in the Karang region. Fundació Fluidra is aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8.

“We are building the pool to help as many children and young people as possible learn to swim and give them tools that could save their lives,” said Fundació Fluidra president Joan Planes.

A report from the World Health Organization says drowning is one of the top 10 causes of death for children across the world. It also puts death rates by drowning at 15 to 20 times higher in Africa than Europe.

With projects like this, Fundació Fluidra aims to boost the concept of the “social pool” that seeks to improve society through enjoyment of a swimming pool, in line with the Fluidra mission to “create the perfect pool and wellness experience responsibly”.