Topic description and stories

Cambridge researchers have long worked with African colleagues on issues that matter not just to the continent but to the world.

Earth

Cambridge confirms its leading role in engagement with Africa

20 Oct 2015

Funding for capacity-building initiatives is renewed ahead of the University's second annual Cambridge-Africa Day .

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Angolan civilians walking past the remains of tanks in 2004. Relics of the conflict still litter the Angolan countryside.

The war that fed itself - and the hollow democracy it left behind

14 Oct 2015

A new study using extensive eyewitness accounts re-examines the causes and legacy of Angola's brutal 27-year civil war, once described by the United...

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Archaeologists outside the entrance to the Mota cave in the Ethiopian highlands, where the remains containing the ancient genome were discovered.

Ancient genome from Africa sequenced for the first time

08 Oct 2015

DNA from 4,500-year-old Ethiopian skull reveals a large migratory wave of West Eurasians into the Horn of Africa around 3,000 years ago had a genetic...

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Young chimpanzee playing with branches.

Young male chimpanzees play more than females with objects, but do not become better tool users

07 Oct 2015

Research into differences between chimpanzees and bonobos in ‘preparation’ for tool use reveals intriguing sex bias in object manipulation in young...

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Cambridge engagement with Africa will expand following major gift

04 Sep 2015

The University of Cambridge’s determination to enhance research capacity across Africa, and to engage in collaborative research with African partners...

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Haile Selassie by Lucien Aigner

Four decades after Haile Selassie’s death, Ethiopia is an African success story

27 Aug 2015

Christopher Clapham, Professor Emeritus at the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge looks at the changes that Ethiopia has undergone...

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Mathare, Nairobi

Building from the ground up: participatory design in Kenya’s oldest slum

05 Aug 2015

In a landmark project with UN-Habitat, a team of Cambridge researchers has designed a community centre in one of Kenya’s biggest and oldest slums...

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African universities reap fruits of fly research

10 Jul 2015

Fruit flies are proving the unlikely source of a new initiative to help improve postgraduate research opportunities in Africa, with the support of...

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Cambridge gets REAL about overcoming obstacles to global education

18 Jun 2015

The Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre aims to promote education as an engine for sustainable development.

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A Young Chimpanzee Playing with Twigs

Tool use is 'innate' in chimpanzees but not bonobos, their closest evolutionary relative

16 Jun 2015

First evidence for a species difference in the innate predisposition for tool use in our closest evolutionary cousins could provide insight into how...

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Strolling, Uganda

"The Professor is World Cup": understanding ‘secret’ urban languages

22 Apr 2015

Research into a ‘playful’ and increasingly popular urban language that grew out of the necessity for criminals to hide their true intent could help...

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Cast of the 'Nariokotome boy' (Homo ergaster) skeleton

Earliest humans had diverse range of body types, just as we do today

27 Mar 2015

New research harnessing fragmentary fossils suggests our genus has come in different shapes and sizes since its origins over two million years ago...

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