Addis Ababa 11th February 2019: The African Union gave out the Kwame Nkrumah Awards for Scientific Excellence for the continental and regional winners during the 2019 Assembly of the Heads of State and Government. H.E Prof. Sarah Anyang Agbor, Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology said that the African Union Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Excellence Awards are awarded at three levels - national, regional and continental with the objective to honour the African men and women who have distinguished themselves through their contribution in Science for African development. She added that the programme is supported by the European Commission.

The Commissioner called upon Member States, Regional Economic Communities and other key stakeholders to popularize science among African citizens, empower them, celebrate their achievements and promote all efforts to transform scientific research into Africa’s sustainable development.

H.E Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of the African Union Commission presented the Regional Prize for Women scientists of USD 20,000 each for the Life and Earth Sciences category to Prof. Aletta Schutte from Southern Region and Prof. Naziha ATTI from the Northern Region.

Prof ATTI holds engineering and PhD degrees from National Institute of Agronomy of Tunisia (INAT). Her main areas of research concern the Sheep and Goat Science Production and their product quality. She co-developed a body condition score notation proper to fat-tail sheep breeds permitting the in vivo prediction of body composition. She has an extensive bibliography with 150 publications, 90 of them are scientific articles (h-index: 18, 1150 citations)

Aletta Schutte is Professor of Physiology, and funded by the Department of Science and Technology as the South African Research Chair (SARChI) in the Early Detection and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Africa – hosted by the Hypertension in Africa Research Team (HART) at the North-West University. Her research focus on a better understanding of the development of hypertension in African populations’.

The incoming Chairperson of the African Union, H.E the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Mr Abdel Fattah El Sisi, presented the Continental awards of USD100,000 to Professor David M. Richardson from South Africa, for the Earth and Life Science category and Professor Abdel-Shafy Fahmy Obada from Egypt, for the Basic Science, Technology and Innovation category.

1. Prof. Richardson is Director of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology and is a Distinguished Professor of Ecology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His field of work is invasion science (the field of science that deals with the full spectrum of issues pertaining to alien and invasive species and the phenomenon of biological invasions). He has received numerous national and international awards. In 2006 he received the prestigious Hans Sigrist Prize from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Prof. Obada research studies deal with the interaction of fields with matter. In the seventies and eighties Obada and co-workers produced papers devoted to reaction field theory that played a fundamental role in the radiation theory since it was first introduced by Lorentz (1909). Prof. Obada and his group have made a significant print in the fields of quantum, optics, quantum information, quantum computation.

H.E Prof. Sarah Anyang Agbor, Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology, subsequently launched the 2019 Edition of the African Union Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Excellence Awards

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