SciDev.Net articles

Just over an hour’s drive from London, down winding lanes lined with oak and beech trees, lies a concrete and glass building housing scientists tasked with a Herculean mission — to safeguard the future of food. The Kew Millennium Seed Bank is the hub of a global conservation network that aims, by 2020, to store a quarter — or 75,000 — of the worl

In this interview, Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, director of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development fellowship programme in Kenya, talks about AWARD’s work supporting the careers of female agricultural scientists across Sub-Saharan Africa.

She outlines the daunting challenge facing Africa: to rapidly expand agricultural production so that the continent can feed itself. Women currently produce the majority of Africa’s food but are severely underrepresented in

In 1985, El Niño research pioneers Mark Cane and Steve Zebiak came up with the first computer model that successfully predicted the periodic Pacific Ocean warming event the following year. Thirty years later, models have improved — but El Niño remains an elusive beast, says Cane.

“The models have gotten better and better, there is no question about that.” However, El Niño is a “chaotic system”, sa

Forests have barely been mentioned in the draft of the international agreement to be made at the Rio+20 Earth Summit later this year (20-22 June), the body that represents 15,000 of the world`s forest researchers has complained.

Forests provide resources essential to the livelihoods of 1.

In this film, as part of our series Africa’s PhD renaissance, scientist Nina Wambiji talks about how the support she has received from AWARD (African Women in Agricultural Research and Development) has helped her become a leading researcher in her field. She was granted a fellowship at AWARD after obtaining a PhD in Japan for her research on rabbitfish. AWARD is a two y