African physicists begin strategy process

We solicit your inputs for the development of the African Strategy for Fundamental and Applied Physics (ASFAP). You may submit your inputs — within the scope of ASFAP working groups — on anything you think is an issue, needs to be improved or is important for physics (fundamental or applied) education and research in Africa.

We refers to these community inputs as letters of Interest (LOI). We are asking for the LOI to be short documents of 2 pages or less (including tables and figures). The submitted LOI will be accessible only within relevant working groups of ASFAP for the purpose to define the major topics to be developed toward the African Strategy report.

LOI submission is open until November 2021. To submit an LOI, please go here.

After the deadlines for LOI, the working groups will study them to define their major topics—these will then be discussed during the 2nd African Conference on Fundamental Applied Physics, ACP2021, planned for December 12-18, 2021.

Students, post-docs, teachers, lecturers, professors, senior professors, retired, university officials, research collaborations, professional societies, etc. may submit LOI as individual or groups. Anybody (whether Africans or not), from Africa or elsewhere, please give us your opinions through the LOI. Please disseminate through your networks.

You may submit more than one LOI, and you may submit LOIs in different categories. ASFAP addresses all physics disciplines as well as Engagement and Education.
Physics topics: Accelerators, Astrophysics & Cosmology, Atomic & Molecular Physics, Biophysics, Computing & 4IR, Earth Science, Energy, Fluid and Plasma, Instrumentation & Detectors, Light Sources, Materials Physics, Medical Physics, Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics, Optics and Photonics, Theoretical & Applied Mechanics.

Engagement: Community Engagement (knowledge and technology transfer, entrepreneurship, industry investments, solutions for employments, skills retention etc.), Physics Education (university and lower grades), increase the number of women in Physics, prepare Young Physicists careers.

Whatever your nationality and the continent you are living in, physicist, student, project leader, academic, working in a company and whatever your skills and position, learned societies, science academies, international organisations, etc., you are all welcome to present ideas, projects, and programmes in few lines (title and abstract) that you can develop later on. Letter of Interest (LoIs) should not exceed two pages.

Please submit your inputs so that your voice and opinion count towards the development of the African Strategy report.

A collective strategy for physics in Africa, Symmetry Magazine

ASFAP was interviewed on Radio France Internationale (rfi) on the 24/05/2021 – 12:19. Catch the podcast here:  “Quelle stratégie pour une véritable renaissance scientifique en Afrique?”

The Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) with African Strategy for Fundamental and Applied Physics (ASFAP)  together  bring a Workshop on Computing and Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) to be held on August 11, 2021 in conjunction with the International Conference on Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

We are planning a Community Town Hall meeting on July 12-15, 2021, to discuss the scope and focus of the working groups. This meeting will result in a community-wide call for Letters of Interest. For details, please see the agenda:  ASFAP Community Town Hall

The African Strategy of Fundamental and Applied Physics is an inclusive and open Strategy where ideas, letters of Intent, studies, white papers are welcome. Contributions and participation are encouraged in at least one of the topical groups. We welcome constructive discussions, ideas, and studies on current and future projects of interest to African development in research and education.