‘African science reporting must cover all aspects to drive development’

Uzodinma Iweala is a medical doctor, a novelist and the chief executive officer of the African Center in New York, USA. In this interview with JOSEPHINE OKOJIE at the just concluded 11th edition of the World Conference for Science journalists (WCSJ 2019) in Lausanne, Switzerland, Iweala spoke about the challenges limiting science reporting in Africa and how research can transform their findings into development. Excerpts:

Can you tell us about the African Center?

The African Center is the former museum for African Art in New York. WE have a 70,000 square meters facilities on 5th avenue in New York and it’s a prime location and the institution is about telling the different stories about Africa ranging from culture, music, art, literature and film among others. The centre looks at policies, good governance and perhaps the future of the content, like how do we get people to think about what we want Africa to be in its various states and in its various countries. We also get to think about business a little bit, so, it’s really the idea that you cannot understand Africa until you understand these three things which are business, art and culture and that give you the whole picture.

In a nutshell, can you evaluate science journalism in Nigeria?

I do not know if am the best person to evaluate but I think what I find interesting is that most of the science reporting I have seen in the country has been tilted towards health and not so much about physics, space and the likes. I will say there is need to reshape the science stories that come out, sometimes I think the stories have too much information or other stories are too short. We need to redefine how we provide people with stories about science that would really interest them. Sometimes, I read the house section of the newspapers just to get a sentiment of what people are talking about and I think the publications have too much information which they can catalogue into different aspects of healthcare. This easily gives an overview of different things that are going on in the health sector easily.

What do you think the African researchers or scientist can do differently to ensure they translate their research findings into development?

The first and foremost thing is to recognize that people are doing really good work and we should not be surprised on the level of intelligent we have in Africa and Nigeria in particular. We have to commend ourselves for the level of research that the researchers are giving despite constrains in conducting the research. Two, we must recognise that there are constraints in translating this research into development because nobody is really paying attention to what they are doing. But this is not the researchers fault. If you look at the developed world, like where I went to medical school in Colombia, they literally have a whole team of people just dedicated in ensuring that the research from the institution is translated into practice. Also, there is an infrastructure to convert the hard times the researchers vent in research to development.

I do not know how sophisticated the system we have in Nigeria is like and this may be why researchers are not really able to monetize their work and again to find the right kind of sharing experience between lab heads and universities and private companies when it comes to the discoveries of arts or scientific research and that is what impact research outcomes in Africa.

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It is important we grow our science reporting to inform the wider public as much as possible on wider science subjects, this also helps in translating research to development. Like for a topic like GMOs, the general public needs to understand the pros and cons in GMO consumption. How can we feed ourselves in the face of a changing climate? The job of the scientist and science journalist is to make the issue clear to the public – like what is it we are actually talking about and is there safety in its consumption among others. It is really interesting that folks should know pretty much about the entire genetic modified food.

The theme of this conference is ‘reaching new heights with science journalism’. How can Africa’s science reporting reach new heights?

Let’s start by celebrate our own, recognizing people like yourself for actually doing really good work. Secondly, we must create a synergy between the researchers and the science journalists in order to drive deeper and regular communication.

One of those things I have not seen very much in any Nigerian newspaper is reporting about space, space aspiration, physics and engineering among others. Who knows maybe it is not relevant to us but we have attitudes about that, we have ideas about it, we have our own cosmologies about it like who know who’s little kid the stories is going to inspire when they read them. African journalists need to think much better because there is so much more in writing about science and this world is just discovery. I remember been younger and seeing all this in the newspaper and it prompted me to read books about physics and I do not know anything about physics then. Who knows whose kid is going to become an astronaut? Who knows whose kid is going to sit down and say you know what, Nigeria needs a space programme?

As the editor-in-chief of Ventures Africa, what do you think are the challenges confronting science news reporting in Nigeria?

The most obvious one is limited resources. Everybody is looking for money and investigating stories requires money so, we just need to be honest about resources. The second thing is inadequate media expertise, for some of these things we need people to have a bit of technical knowledge in the background. For example, physics, I might feel it’s too complicated for my personality but there is somebody out there who does have that understanding and that person should be recruited and given that opportunity. Also, we have to look at different ways of doing things; we just have to think about different modes on how to do things not to try to replicate what we see from the developed world all the time. You know journalist practice in New York is not the same practice in Lagos or Abuja.

In newsroom all across Africa you see less female reporting science; so what do you think we can do to bridge that gender gap?

First of all that’s a whole lot of nonsense from my perspective at Venture Africa and also very important people are women where all of the women that were working were doing all kinds of news, this was not any form of ‘oh you report on arts and entertainment,’ everyone had to do everything cause we were such a small team and I think everyone one can do anything either as women or men. We need to have more women in top editorial positions in various media houses.

It has been shown that when you have a more diverse newsroom you get better stories which means if you have women reporting on things that men usually consider that they are usually experts, you get better stories and more diverse stories. So, am up for more diverse newsroom and giving opportunity to people who actually needs them.