African Gong Reports & Publications: Publications

JCOM Issue 04, Volume 22, August 2023

‘Looking back to launch forward: a self-reflexive approach to decolonising science education and communication in Africa’

Authors: Dr. Temilade Sesan and Mr. Ayodele Ibiyemi

Abstract:

The imbalance in the global scientific landscape resulting from the enduring legacy of colonialism in the south and the hegemony of scientific paradigms originating in the north is immense. Our paper makes a case for employing traditional knowledge systems and paradigms as tools for redressing this imbalance in African societies. To achieve this goal, the paper argues, scholars and science communicators must actively pursue a radical, “power-literate” agenda of scientific decolonisation on the continent. Central to this mission is the need for scholars to be equipped with a keen sense of the past — including an understanding of what worked for knowledge production and perpetuation in pre-colonial African societies without which science education and communication in those societies will remain untethered from the realities of the present and their visions for the future. Concurrently, attention must be given to nurturing home-grown paradigms and platforms for research in higher education that are rigorous yet unencumbered by the age-long tendency to refract African experiences through northern lenses.

KEYWORDS:

  • Scholarly communication
  • Science communication in the developing world
  • Science education

Link to the Essay below:

Link to the Essay

JCOM Issue 04, 2022. Special Issue: Responsible science communication across the globe – June 2022

Overview Article on Special Issue: ‘Inclusion, reflection and co-creation: responsible science communication across the globe’

Link to the Overview Article

Dr. Rasekoala Contributed an article to the Commentary Section of the Special Issue on behalf of African Gong.

Title of Commentary: ‘Responsible science communication in Africa: rethinking drivers of policy, Afrocentricity and public engagement’

Abstract of Commentary:

The EU-funded RETHINK Project has demonstrated the critical need for
transformational pathways in how science communicators navigate the increasingly challenging landscape of the field, in an era of growing public distrust, the expansion of online ‘mis-information’ digital platforms, and the resulting disconnection between science communicators and the general public. This Commentary seeks to locate, contextualise, and interrogate the good practice outcomes and recommendations of the RETHINK Project within the African regional scenario, and within the contexts, challenges and opportunities that exist therein. To achieve this, the author argues, African science communicators must actively pursue a radical and explicitly transformational agenda of intellectual Afrocentricity, the decolonisation of their practices and programmes, and address the multiple gaps inherent across the policy, practice, research, resources, and capacity-building divides on the continent. The prospects for the delivery of this agenda are further elaborated in a transformative and re-defined — ‘SMART’ Framework for Science Communication & Public Engagement in Africa.

KEYWORDS:

Link to Dr. Rasekoala’s Commentary Article:

Link to the article

JCOM – Neglected Spaces in Science Communication Commentary Series (February 2021)

Dr Rasekoala Co-authored an article for this Commentary Series led by Dr. Clare Wilkinson. The article is titled ‘From the margins to the mainstream: deconstructing science communication as a white, Western paradigm’.

The Authors of the Article are: Summer May Finlay, Sujatha Raman, Elizabeth Rasekoala, Vanessa Mignan, Emily Dawson, Liz Neeley, and Lindy A. Orthia

ABSTRACT:

In this commentary we are concerned with what mainstream science communication has neglected through cultural narrowness and ambient racism: other practitioners, missing audiences, unvalued knowledge, unrecognised practices. We explore examples from First Nations Peoples in the lands now known as Australia, from Griots in West Africa and from Peoples Science Movements in India to help us reimagine
science communication. To develop meaningfully inclusive approaches to science communication, we argue there is an urgent need for the ‘mainstream’ to recognise, value and learn from science communication practices that are all too often seen as at ‘the margins’ of this field.

KEYWORDS:

The link to the Article is at:

link to the Article

The link for the Neglected Spaces in Science Communication
Commentary Series Articles is at:

link to the Article

JCOM Commentary Series ‘The need for feminist approaches to science communication’ – September 2019

Dr Rasekoala contributed an article to this Commentary series led by Prof. Bruce Lewenstein, ‘The need for feminist approaches to Science Communication’. This is a unique collection of contributions inspired by feminist approaches to science communication, and the authors include: Claire Wilkinson, Megan Halpern, Stephanie Steinhardt, Tania Perez-Bustos, Laura Fogg-Rogers & Laura Hobbs and Elizabeth Rasekoala.

ABSTRACT:

As science communication develops as a field of both practice and research, it needs to address issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion across a wide range, including race, power, class, gender. Doing so will require deeper understanding of conceptual work and practical activities that address those issues. This brief comment introduces a series of commentaries that provide one approach: feminist approaches to science communication.

KEYWORDS:

  • science communication: theory and models
  • social inclusion
  • women in science

The link for the Commentary series is at:

link to journal in English

Dr. Rasekoala’s contribution is titled, ‘The seeming paradox of the need for a feminist agenda for science communication and the notion of science communication as a ‘ghetto’ of women’s over-representation: perspectives, interrogations and nuances from the global south’

The direct link to her article is at:

link to journal in English

Additional background to this Commentary series from the PCST 2014 Conference held in Salvador, Brazil, in 2014, is at:

link to article in Portuguese/English

Imagine Pangea Africa – Latin America Science Communication Competition

  • Article in Nature Journal, ‘Science popularization: Research videos in indigenous languages’. Click the image to read article.

View the Article

  • Article in The Conversation online Journal, ‘Indigenous Languages must feature more in science communication’. Click image to view article.

    link to article in English