Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields.
Student volunteers Susannah Duck and Izhan Khan describe working with a Tanzanian community to install a system that turns sewage into essential products.
How do former Lord’s Resistance Army soldiers – men, women and children who have used the Bible as a weapon of war – learn to reread the scriptures once they return home? This is the puzzle facing researchers from Uganda and Cambridge.
When Ghanaian Abu Yaya wondered why his country imports all of its electroporcelain – a small but crucial component for electrical power transmission – it led to a collaboration with Cambridge materials scientist Kevin Knowles that might one day result in Ghana being able to reduce its frequent blackouts.
We ask how a 'matchmaking' programme that teams up Cambridge and African researchers is making expertise and resources available to support Africans working in Africa.
Iron deficiency can be fatal. But in countries where patients are also likely to have other serious diseases, so too can the iron supplements used to treat it. Nearly 12 years ago, Dora Pereira – sometimes referred to as ‘The Iron Lady’ – was part of the team who had an idea for a new supplement. She now leads its clinical trial in The Gambia.
Half the children in Africa miss out on school and basic learning as a result of poverty, gender or disability. While major efforts are being made to reverse this situation, Cambridge researchers are working with NGOs on the ground to ask what works, why and how much it costs.
Cambridge is one of the world’s leading universities in its engagement with, and support for, African research. This month we begin a month-long focus on some of these partnerships, introduced here by Professor Eilís Ferran, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations.
After four years of escalating civil conflict, a truce has unexpectedly arisen in Mozambique. But what are the chances of this ceasefire lasting, asks Justin Pearce, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Politics and International Studies & Research Associate of St John's College.
Working in a lab as a basic scientist can often seem far removed from the real world. A year since the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak over, one researcher tells how the skills he learned working in a lab in Cambridge turned out to be surprisingly useful in fighting one of the most terrifying disease outbreaks of recent times.
© 2025 University of Cambridge