UKinSouthAfrica hosted a GREAT Britain zone at SciFest Africa 2015

Last week had a distinctly technical flavour for me, with the arrival of Professor Robin Grimes, the Foreign Secretary’s Chief Scientific Adviser making his second official visit to South Africa.

Prof Grimes gave a lecture in Pretoria hosted by the National Science and Technology Forum on the UK’s Nuclear Energy Vision to a packed room of scientists, journalists and officials(recordings available). From the 18th-25th of March, we hosted a GREAT Britain zone at SciFest Africa 2015, South Africa’s premier science festival in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, hosting approximately 70 000 people of all ages over the course of the week. Professor Grimes also attended and had a series of hands on talks on basic science to even more crowded rooms of young students. The talks were fascinating for a non scientist like me, especially when I got to act as his laboratory assistant handling some liquid nitrogen.

The excellent UK offering at SciFest Africa 2015 included our full size, 13 meter long, Bloodhound SSC model car, that drew thousands of visitors, eager to learn more about the upcoming world landspeed record attempt here on South Africa soil later this year. We also hosted by the ‘Modern Alchemist’ (Dr Peter Wothers, University of Cambridge), the ‘Kitchen Chemist’ (Dr Stephen Ashworth, University of East Anglia), who wowed crowds with their exciting, often explosive demonstration of the power of chemistry and all of the exciting things that can be done with everyday kitchen ingredients. View one fascinating demonstration that was performed.

In her speech, Science and Technology Minister Pandor spoke extremely warmly of the longstanding and rich UK/SA scientific relationship and of research potential to come. The UK Brand and Innovation is Great Britain really resonated- as did the British Council’s competition for Young Scientists: Famelab. On top of this, we launched the first joint publication on our Newton Fund, our flagship partnership on science and innovation.

Listen to what I had to say from SciFest Africa 2015 regarding our relationship and work in Science and innovation with South Africa. You can also view picture from the event here.