Will the next great Kenyan scientist please stand up?

Rupal Dhanji (left) and Ramya Ranamandra of SCLP Samaj School in Nairobi represented Kenya in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in the US. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The other team of Rupal Dhanji and Ramya Yanamandra found a way to detect salmonella in water in less than a minute in what could save thousands from cholera and typhoid.
  • The challenge is not just in getting more girls into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); the biggest problem is teaching young people to solve problems.
  • Lecturer-turned-bureaucrat-turned lecturer again Dr Bitange Ndemo recently suggested that Kenya should have a chapati making machine by now in order to assure quality.

An 18-year-old girl from New York who has never been to Kenya built an affordable water purification system for the Turkana Basin.

I met Alexis D’Alessandro in Phoenix, Arizona, last week passionately presenting her project and trying to encourage girls to do science.

She was one of 1,750 young scientists, makers and entrepreneurs from around the world at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

I must confess I found most of the presentations hard to understand. Teenagers presented complex projects in such diverse categories as biomedical engineering, robotics and intelligent machines, and translational medical sciences.

Consider a sample topic: “Acacia Xanthophloea Characterisation and Preservation Techniques of Sapwood (Plant Xylem) as a Low Cost Membrane Filtration Device for Arid and Semi-Arid Areas in Kenya.” That is what Shree Cutchi Leva Patel Samaj School Nairobi students Mansi Ajey and Vishal Vekaria chose to study.

They are Year 10 students, just your typical teenagers who spend some of their time obsessing about pop culture and pranking their friends.

They got the idea during a school trip to Kajiado and noticed that most of the villagers were using contaminated water, exposing them to diseases.

They won $1,000 (Sh100,000) from the Qatar Foundation and an Honourable Mention by USAID. They were third overall in the environmental engineering category, the first Kenyans to win on that global stage. “We had to change everything we presented at the Kenya Science Fair to compete here,” Vishal said with a smile.

"The standards here are on another level," his teacher, Laban Chweya, who’s also an ISEF judge, concurs. “Our students are so bright. They have grown up in a different age from ours; let us give them an opportunity to run away with science.” That the Kenyan teams were good is indisputable.

The other team of Rupal Dhanji and Ramya Yanamandra found a way to detect salmonella in water in less than a minute in what could save thousands from cholera and typhoid.

The two pairs are still lucky enough to gain exposure at such a cut-throat international science competition. Their school uses the British system of education and has access to resources that most public high schools can only dream of.

In the three years I have covered Intel ISEF in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Phoenix this year no students from government schools have made it.

It is perhaps an indictment of the quality of science education in those institutions. The obvious conclusion is that the physics, biology and chemistry teachers or students are not good enough to match their peers from around the world.

The challenge is not just in getting more girls into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); the biggest problem is teaching young people to solve problems. Instead of just teaching enough science to allow kids to pass exams, we should teach them to build and tinker.

Our generation and those before us didn’t make anything. The maker culture has never been strong in Kenya yet we’re major consumers of technology, not manufacturers.

In a globalised world, we can finally begin to take our place among those who move us forward, those who create and innovate and iterate and develop new things. There is no Kenyan known for any breakthrough scientific discoveries.

Even when village youths with few resources but endless imagination build makeshift planes or run pirate radio broadcasts, we crack down on them instead of encouraging and supporting them.

Kenyan corporates and government tender committees are just as likely to give a contract to a young innovator’s company as pigs are likely to fly. There are no Kenyan research institutions connecting with high school or college science programmes to improve them, or even collaborate.

There are no scholarships for the best students to pursue their dreams in technical fields and maybe get their ideas beyond the lab to the real world. Little wonder, then, that less than a quarter of all students in institutions of higher learning are in STEM courses.

Lecturer-turned-bureaucrat-turned lecturer again Bitange Ndemo recently suggested that Kenya should have a chapati-making machine by now in order to assure quality.

But because Kenyan society hasn’t raised its young to question convention and find new ways of doing things, probably nobody has thought of that.

How will we get the next generation’s scientists? Alexis won several prizes, including the Patrick H. Hurd Sustainability Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency. She will be heading to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology after she graduates from high school in a few months.

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