Bame Keabetswe Explores the Okavango Delta: “I Feel So Grateful to Work Here” (SSAWRN)
by Alan Anderson
March 28, 2016
As someone who spent her formative years at the edge of one of the driest regions on earth — the Kalahari Desert — it seems only logical for Bame Sanah Keabetswe to have chosen a career that has to do with water. Born in Zimbabwe to a Motswana father and Zimbabwean mother, Bame grew up in the Motswana village of Mahalapye, a parched community on the main road between the capital of Gaborone and the second largest city, Francistown. Thanks to her curiosity, love of nature and hard work, she is eagerly studying the wetlands, minerals, and soil of one of the wettest places in southern Africa, the Okavango Delta of northern Botswana. Now a SSAWRN MPhil student at the University of Botswana’s Okavango Research Institute (ORI), Bame aspires to a research career as a full faculty member at UB or some other university in the region.
Across the flat expanse of the Okavango, the delta is flooded for large portions of each year by the enormous rivers of rainy Angola, just across the border to the north. This flooding supports myriad populations of riverine plants and animals, from the tiniest plankton to the large, wild African mammals that draw thousands of tourists each year. Bame’s interest is in the chemistry of heavy metals in the water, soil, and vegetation of this complex ecosystem.
Bame laid the foundations for her studies in Mahalapye, completing primary school and entering Madiba Senior School in 2005. From there she was accepted by the University of Botswana in Gaborone, where she majored in chemistry. After earning a BSc in 2011, she took up a position as a research assistant at the Okavango Research Institute (ORI) in the town of Maun, about a thousand kilometers away from her home. She was eager to try something new.
After two years of working at ORI, assisting with the RISE node there and becoming steadily more familiar with the research projects underway, there was an opening for a RISE-sponsored MPhil student, and ORI’s Director Prof. Wellington Masamba urged her to apply. In 2013, Bame was accepted into SSAWRN and she began her MPhil research.
Bame in the Laboratory at ORI
Her enthusiasm for the Okavango — and her confidence — came from a fortunate upbringing and supportive parents. “My dad especially always believed in me. If I had told him I wanted to be president of the country, he would believe that I could. And I did too!”
“I always wanted to do things for myself. Growing up, I loved this cartoon called Dexter’s Laboratory. It’s about a kid who spends all his time in a lab he built in his parents’ house. They didn’t know what he was doing; he just built things and solved problems all by himself. I liked the thrill of that. I always wanted to work in science, and especially to work in nature. Out here it’s like Jurassic Park, and I just love it.”
Like the scientists in that movie, she works amid a vast tableau of African wildlife that includes the beautiful, the dangerous, and the bizarre: bounding impalas; lumbering elephants; hippos; lions; and countless burrowing colonies of naked mole rats.
She did admit that the delta island where she does her research is not without some of its own Jurassic Park-like dangers. “One day the lab technicians were working near here, out on the island with the pickup truck, when suddenly a water buffalo came after them. They dropped all their tools and ran. Another day I was pumping out ground water and a really big elephant was watching me from about 30 meters away. He wasn’t showing any signs of charging, but I lost my nerve and dropped my tools and ran anyway.”
ORI scientists examine elephant bones found on Nxaraga Island. (L to R: Bame; Mangaliso Gondwe; Alan Anderson; Kaelo Makati)
She feels it is a privilege to spend her research days — and some of her nights — in a remote and primitive camp about two hours by fast boat from a dock near Maun. “You know how sometimes you get so used to your surroundings or situation that you don’t notice it any longer? I never really get ‘used to’ working in the Okavango. I feel so grateful that I work here. It is an absolutely spectacular and fascinating place to be conducting my research. As a child, I always imagined myself working as a scientist in the Amazon. But hey, the Okavango isn’t much different!”
ORI Scientists' Camp on Nxaraga Island
As a chemist, Bame was well prepared to study many complex relationships between animals, plants, and their environment. The focus of her master’s research has been analyzing the water, soil, and plants for heavy metals around Nxaraga Island, her research site. This remote point of dry land provides sufficient shelter and battery-powered instruments to allow her to work for several days at a time before returning to analyze her samples in the laboratory.
The Nxaraga Island camp attendant keeps watch over the grounds from this tree. He even sleeps up there!
A major focus of the lab is water quality, and another project for Bame and others is to determine whether the chlorination of drinking water in communities around the delta is producing carcinogenic chemicals. “At the camp, we can drink the water, where it is very safe. The delta acts as a filter. It’s cleaner there than it is downstream, and that is an issue.”
Various kinds of carbonates and toxins, such as cadmium and lead, concentrate for unknown reasons near the edges of the delta’s islands, such as Nxaraga. Bame acknowledges that she and her colleagues have only just begun to investigate the countless chemical challenges of the Okavango Delta, and she relishes the opportunity to make her own contributions.
Bame with SIG Program Associate Sarah Rich on Nxaraga Island
Bame hopes to continue on to a PhD in chemistry after finishing her MPhil. When she’s not in the lab, she is actively involved in Femina Woman Association, a local NGO that fosters women’s empowerment through the mentoring of young girls.
In a major recognition of her work thus far, Bame was named the 2016 Next Einstein Forum (NEF) Ambassador for Botswana. She represented her country at the inaugural Next Einstein Forum Global Gathering, which was held in Dakar, Senegal on March 8–10. Bame plans to use her platform as NEF Ambassador to encourage other Motswana women to pursue careers in STEM and to visit local schools with the goal of getting schoolchildren excited about STEM subjects. “Young scientists in Africa [must be] innovative, and courageous enough to rise up and drive change in their own communities.” Bame is certainly playing a key role in driving that change, and we are eager to see what the future holds for this passionate, young activist-scientist.
Last week, we were fortunate to speak to Mathews Tsirizeni, a PhD student at the University of Botswana, who is sponsored by our fantastic partner, RISE. Mathews explains how his research will help enhance technology transfer on the continent, and calls for more institutions specialising in science and technology in Africa.
You are doing a PhD in Natural Resource Management – Hydrology at the University of Botswana. What does your research focus on?
My research focuses on surface streamflow, sediment and nutrient transport analysis using a mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system. This specifically involves analysing surface streamflow, sediment and nutrient transport from high-resolution close range imagery taken by UAV, producing Digital Terrain Model (Orthoimage) and Digital Elevation Model for further analysis, and repeated analysis of surface streamflow using flow meters from survey points. In addition, I have analysed water quality using selected parameters in a laboratory, and the results from this work will help me interpret the data contained in the hi-res imagery. Through this research, I hope to gain the information needed to create UAV mission operation guidelines to help monitor floods in the Okavango wetland system and other African rivers and wetlands.
As you may know, the Okavango Wetlands in Botswana is one of the most dynamic ecosystems in the world, with varied hydrological processes and continual morphological changes including sediment transport (the movement of sediment due to gravity and the movement of fluid in which the sediment is contained). However, parts of the Okavango system are extremely remote, which makes data acquisition challenging. I believe that UAV systems are a cost-effective way to acquire high-quality data that can help us better understand wetland floods, landcover, peat fires and land forms.
How will your research help drive scientific development in Africa?
Africa must embrace science and technology if it is to ensure that sustainable development and, specifically, food security is a reality for all. My research will create new opportunities for food production through the use of precision agriculture, enhance flood control, and help provide the data needed to enhance our continent’s adaptive capacity to climate change. Furthermore, my research will enhance our understanding of using UAV systems in scientific research, which will boost technology transfer on the continent.
You also presented at the 2nd African Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Conference last year. What can we do to enhance food security on the continent?
In my opinion, Africa needs to adopt an Ecosystem-based Adaptation approach, which uses biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of a broader strategy to help people and communities adapt to the threats posed by climate change. My presentation focused on water science, which is crucial in EbA, as it helps us address challenges including water quality, quantity, and its role in regulating plant growth and nutrient cycling. This information will really help us build adaptive capacity in Africa.
As you may know, the Planet Earth Institute is working for the scientific independence of Africa. What does scientific independence for Africa mean for you?
For me, scientific independence means that science is a key part of public sector and academic institution budgets. Ultimately, I want to see a continent where African governments are driving scientific research, and scientists and researchers are no longer dependent on donors or project funders.
What is your hope for science in Africa in 2016?
In 2016, I hope to see more educational institutions that specialise in science and technology. I am certain that this can be achieved. As you may know, countries such as Uganda and Malawi are leading the way with their dedicated science and tech universities. I have also seen many vibrant discussions about STI on social media, led by groups such as SABINA, RISE and others, which makes me confident about the future of science. What’s more, the newly ratified Paris Agreement (from the recent COP 21 negotiations) also supports science, research and technological development and transfer, particularly on the continent. I feel sure that 2016 will be a great year for the sciences in Africa.
Water Wheel, Vol. 12, No. 5, September/October 2013
A student from the Institute of Water Research undertaking invertebrate sampling.
The development of solutions to sub-Saharan Africa’s water resource problems is currently hindered by a shortage of trained personnel, especially at high levels of academic and professional expertise. This gap is frequently filled by consultants from outside the region, who may contribute to the solution of specific problems, but do little to contribute to longer-term development of capacity within the region.
With this need in mind, the Sub Saharan Water Resources Network (SSAWRN) was launched in 2008 with funding from the Regional Initiative in Science and Education (RISE) programme of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The programme is aimed at strengthening higher education in the science and engineering fields by increasing the number of skilled Doctorate and Masters persons in Africa. The network is one of five African networks funded by the Carnegie Corporation.
SSAWRN’s focus has been on fundamental and applied science that can contribute to solutions to the diverse problems facing the region in terms of securing adequate (in terms of quantity and quality) water supplies that are environmentally sustainable. There are many water-related pressures facing the region, including declining observation networks (and therefore a decline in the information available for management), declining human capacity, increasing resource use, and the very real possibility of increasing resource variability associated with future climates.
As the region strives toward improving both political and economic stability, the importance of providing secure water supplies will assume increasing significance. If this is neglected, there is the potential for conflicts within communities (through a lack of water and sanitation services provision) as well as between countries (through a lack of agreement on transboundary sharing of water resources).
Prof Denis Hughes (Director of the Institute of Water Research or IWR at Rhodes University) is the Academic Director of SSAWRN, a network that comprises four university nodes. Besides IWR, the other three institutions are the Okavango Research Institute at the University of Botswana, Department of Geology at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, and the School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Resources at Makerere University in Uganda.
Research Areas and Graduates
Water resource science should be seen as a multi- and interdisciplinary science that addresses the problems and issues associated with managing water resources, including surface and groundwater quantity, water quality and related ecological dependencies, water use and its management. There are many research opportunities in the field of water resource science within sub-Saharan Africa, covering many basic disciplines, including civil engineering, geography, hydrology, ecology, water chemistry, geology and environmental science.
The students at SSAWRN are conducting projects that are aligned to applied research, and that address the solutions to identified socioeconomic problems affecting various countries, thus creating a bridge between academia and society. In the past five years, the network has recruited 27 students (and three post-doctoral students) from ten different African countries. A total of seven PhD students and six MSc students have graduated in the disciplines of hydrology, water resources science, natural resource management and hydrogeology.
Recent Rhodes graduates Sithabile Tirivarombo, Paul Mensah and Irene Naigaga.
Networking: Opportunities and Limitations
Some of the benefits that the students and the institutions have derived by being part of a network include growth in the profile of indigenous African research in the field of water resources, largely through the outputs of the students, as well as successful applications to other funding bodies. The latter has allowed the students to expand the resources available to them to complete their studies and launch their careers.
The students also benefit from disseminating research ideas and results at regional and international conferences and workshops. This contributes to their academic confidence, increases their exposure to other scientists and boosts the reputation of their host institutions. Finally there is the sharing of research, resources and co-supervision of students, which have fostered a multidisciplinary approach to water resource science research.
SSAWRN has encountered some limitations that are being addressed where possible. Some of these present lessons for other water institutions. As examples, the broad subject scope of the students projects and the limited number of available supervisory staff has limited co-supervision possibilities across the network nodes, primarily due to the small numbers of experienced supervisors, who already have heavy workloads. The high costs of travelling within the region are a major stumbling block in bringing supervisors and students together more than once or twice a year.
Language barriers have also limited co-supervision possibilities for students from French or Portuguese speaking countries. Some of the students have identified the need for additional short training courses at the start of their studies to fill any gaps in their academic skills. The diverse standard for training across Africa makes this particularly problematic for students registering for a thesis-based postgraduate degree. In this regard, there are two taught masters programmes that will be commencing over the coming year at Eduardo Mondlane University and Rhodes University that offer advanced disciplinary and transdisciplinary courses, short courses on postgraduate research and writing, and address issues of language (where possible).
Future of the Network and Students
The majority of the network graduates have joined universities as post-docs or departmental staff members in Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa. There is continued networking between some of the graduates that have returned to their home countries.
Following the six years of RISE funding, the SSAWRN network will be entering the final phase of its three-year funding by the Carnegie Corporation in 2014, and more graduates will be joining the ranks of academics, researchers and practitioners in the near future as a realisation of the network’s vision.
The Water Wheel is a bi-monthly magazine on water and water research published by the South African Water Research Commission (WRC).
An initiative to train science lecturers and boost collaboration among researchers at African universities is likely to be renewed and expanded next year.
The final installment of a US$5 million grant for the period 2011–2013 for the Regional Initiative in Science and Education (RISE), launched in 2008, will be provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, United States, in March next year.
But a third phase, from 2014 to 2016 — to focus on building partnerships for expansion and increasing the visibility of academic networks and their activities — is now likely to take place.
RISE plans an expansion into Francophone Africa, and possibly North Africa, according to Lori Mulcare, a RISE administrator based at the Science Initiative Group, the US science institute coordinating the initiative alongside African partners.
"The original competition [for RISE grants] in 2007 was open to universities in research institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa but, because of the linguistic limitations of our small secretariat, only English-language proposals were accepted and, as a result, very few proposals came from non-Anglophone countries," she told SciDev.Net.
RISE is yet to secure funding for the expansion, but it has formed a partnership with the African University of Science and Technology in Nigeria to host an African-based co-secretariat and add multilingual capacity as needed.
RISE works with PhD and MSc-level scientists and engineers in Sub-Saharan Africa, through university-based research and training networks, in disciplines such as biochemistry, environmental science and pharmacology. Its main purpose is to train new faculty members to teach in African universities, and to upgrade current faculty qualifications.
Five academic networks, including the African Materials Science and Engineering Network (AMSEN) and the Western Indian Ocean Regional Initiative, each received US$800,000 for the 2011–2013 phase.
Mulcare told SciDev.Net that the grant money mainly covers fees, bursaries, travel between network sites, student conferences and purchasing educational equipment.
"RISE’s primary goal is to use the network structure to provide comprehensive research and training for master’s and PhD students in science and engineering disciplines," said Mulcare. "RISE graduates are well prepared to contribute to and strengthen universities in their home countries or regions, as teachers, mentors and researchers," she added.
Mulcare said RISE is currently supporting 63 master’s and 67 doctoral students, of whom around a third are women.
Patrick Okori, Dean of the School of Agricultural Sciences at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, said the initiative could boost the number of African scientists working on the continent.
"Most of our scientists have gone to work outside the continent so we need a replacement for them," Okori said. "We will need students with analytical capacities and high level skills to drive new innovations and research, which can lead to the development of our continent."
Enduring the Shocks of a Stressful Environment (SSAWRN)
by Alan Anderson
November 22, 2010
Moseki Motsholapheko entered RISE by an unusual route – from the field of political science, and “from the inside.” He had been working as a social scientist at the Okavango Research Institute since 2000 as a research assistant, studying human adaptation to flooding.
The human population of the Okavango region has grown rapidly in recent decades, slowed only by the onslaught of HIV/AIDS, and Moseki has worked with Prof. Donald Kgathi, an economist, to understand the response of villagers and rural farmers to the many “shocks” inherent in a region where relentless drought is punctuated by occasional floods. In a land as flat as a table, as is the Okavango, a flood that raises the water level by even a meter can destroy houses and fields across a vast area. The shock of dessication can deny water to livestock, curtail fishing, and prevent planting of crops. “I’ve been doing research on livelihoods, on the adaptation of people to drought, diseases, and other large shocks,” said Moseki. “The shock I’m working on now is dessication.”
He heard about RISE in 2008, when he had nearly completed a study of water and livelihoods in the area around the Boteti River, near Maun. He was about to complete an MS in environmental science, having decided to shift toward the natural sciences. During his work with Prof. Kgathi, he had participated in a large, three-nation SADC project on water management and policy issues around ephemeral river basins, such as the Boteti. An ephemeral river is one that flows briefly in response to rainfall, then returns to a dry state. In southern Africa, the Okavango River is an anomaly, pulsing in response to the Angolan rainy season, but continuing to flow during other months of the year.
One of the findings of the study, said Moseki, was that dispersed management authority over water issues had been both top-down and inefficient, creating policy conflicts and inconveniences for users. Challenges ranged from outright lack of water for some users to policies that created barriers to people seeking water. For example, he said, people in rural communities who needed to apply for a borehole permit to obtain water for a kitchen garden might have to travel 200 km and pay a 10-pula fee (about $2, a substantial amount for a peasant farmer) to fill out an application.
“I co-authored a paper about this,” he said, “and a lot of the issues we raised have been included in the review of the national Water Master Plan, which was completed in 2009. Some of the results have been good. For example, the water authorities that used to be in charge of regulation, policy, and supply services are dividing those responsibilities into three different offices, as they should.”
At the heart of much of Moseki’s work has been the hydrological cycle of the Okavango. The subsistence farmers around the Okavango depend on two different kinds of farming. Conventional farming depends on ordinary rainfall, which is scant and unpredictable. Flood recession farming, or molapo farming, uses the same technique that farmers have followed along the Nile for millennia. When the annual floods recede, the farmers plant quickly in the rich soil of the flood plain, hoping their crops will flourish in the moisture left behind. The yields from this technique can be very high; a good molapo year can produce more than 16 times the yield in sorghum as dryland farming. But such yields are never certain; during some years, the flood water may never leave the fields, or it may return to inundate fields that have already been planted, or it may not arrive at all. During drought years, molapo farmers are forced to depend on the same ordinary rainfall as the other farmers, which is scant and undependable, and may occasionally bring its own floods. Only a few crops are amenable to molapo farming: primarily maize, sorghum, and millet, with smaller amounts of beans, melons, pumpkins, and groundnuts. Many people also earn income by processing sorghum into a kind of beer.
“Our findings confirm that the people in this region generally have a low capacity to adapt to shocks,” said Moseki. “They lack almost every kind of capital they need – human capital, financial capital, and physical capital when they are far from the main settlements. There has also been a general decline in social capital, the close human networks that people count on during times of shock. We believe that policies and strategies should promote high access to natural capital” – essential resources such as water, grazing land, fisheries, and forests for firewood. “This is a way to increase the resilience of households when a shock comes.”
Some young scientists in Africa, especially residents of former British colonies, benefit from their legacy of English, the de facto language of science. There is no such benefit here in Mozambique, where would-be scientists struggle to learn not only their discipline but a new tongue that few people outside the tourist industry ever hear in this poor country. Even though I speak some Portuguese, communicating with graduate students Govate Egideo and Agostinho Vilanculos was a strain on us all, and they each described the frustrations of using their scant English to write proposals and reports and to communicate with English-speaking advisers. Govate has sought out a tutor at a foreign consulate in Maputo, but he is not even sure whether the consulate (or the tutor) is British or American.
Agostinho worries that the language barrier will limit his career, despite his determination and encouragement from mentors.
Mozambican Student Leads His Country Toward Modern Water Management (SSAWRN)
by Alan Anderson
22 April 2009
Agostinho Vilanculos, a native of a remote village 250 km north of the capital of Maputo, counts himself lucky to have escaped the fate of so many victims of Mozambique’s civil war and subsequent turmoil. “It was really hard,” he remembers. “It is still hard.” His mother was a “farmer,” and his father had to seek work in the gold mines of South Africa, seeing his son once or twice a year. Two grandparents were murdered during the fighting. But Agostinho is well on his way toward a rewarding career in research and teaching.
Despite little support at home, he was lucky enough to finish high school in his village and pass the difficult college entrance exam. This won him a free pass to the single national university, renamed after revolutionary hero Eduardo Mondlane. There, remembering the floods that plagued the giant rivers of his home area, he chose to study water management in hopes he could learn something that might help.
After graduating, he won a scholarship to work on an MSc at the University of Zimbabwe, where he met Prof. Pieter van der Zaag of UNESCO’s Institute of Water in Delft. He began to learn resource modeling, and Van der Zaag told him about a new stream flow model developed by the US Geological Survey after the disastrous flooding of the Limpopo, Zambezi, and other African rivers in 2001. The model uses satellite cloud data to predict near-term rainfall, and Agostinho was able to correlate cloud data with flooding of the Limpopo, completing a thesis on the subject for his MSc.
Then last year van der Zaag urged him to apply for a RISE scholarship, which he did, proposing to use the technique on the Zambezi River, Africa’s third largest. This proposal was approved by Prof. Denis Hughes of Rhodes University in South Africa, a leader of the SSAWRN network, who also agreed to be his PhD supervisor. Agostinho has begun learning the complex mathematics he will need to model the river system.
At present, water managers of Kariba Dam in Zimbabwe respond to floods at the last moment, releasing huge amounts of water as their dam is threatened. This forces managers of Cahora Bassa Dam downstream in Mozambique to do the same. In some years this has flooded countless unsuspecting villages in the flood plain between Cahora Bassa and the coast. The dam managers do not believe that satellite data can help them, but Agostinho is determined to show them it can once his model is ready. He also hopes to correlate dam discharge with near-shore fish harvests along the rich Sofala Bank.
He admits that he faces a difficult challenge. He works in an ill-equipped, crowded room in a run-down government building. He has no peers in Mozambique who can help him learn the complex modeling he needs, and gets little support from state hydrologists, who give scant thought to floods until they actually arrive. But through the RISE water network, he now has both partnership and guidance from Prof. Hughes, as well as Prof. van der Zaag, and is determined to demonstrate the power of his newly discovered techniques.
