African laser centre launched
Christina Scott
 The African Laser Centre just launched in South Africa has a
particular kind of damage control high on its to-do list for 2004. Laser
equipment across the continent is lying in the dark, in dire need of repair
due to funding constraints, a shortage of skilled technicians and the brain
drain.
"It is both an intellectual challenge and also a developmental
challenge,"
said Sénégalese professor Ahmadou Wagué, president of African Laser Atomic
Molecular Network. "In Africa we need both because we need to develop
intellectual resources and also we have to not forget about the application of
this knowledge. Laser joins these two."
Tunisia's Tunis el Manar University has two large and elderly nitrogen
lasers whose thyratrons (a high-powered gas switch) require repair.
Sénégal's ageing equipment at Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar needs a
mechanical facelift while the physics department at Addis Ababa University
in Ethiopia wants their mothballed argon ion laser for spectroscopy and
materials analysis. The African Laser Centre, based in Pretoria at Africa's
largest research organisation, the Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research (CSIR), will try to prioritise these repairs with one million Rand
seed money offered by the South African government.
The new centre, which has been two years in the making through the New
Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), offers laser research
institutes the chance to upgrade their technicians at the same time as their
equipment.
"We can find worldclass scientists but we battle to find technicians to
support them," says Henry Tromp, a business unit manager at the National
Laser Centre in Pretoria, South Africa. "Usually we send people overseas
for
training at the manufacturers' facilities for a week to a month. This time
we will probably send people to work in South Africa to get basic training
in laboratory running and experimental set ups for six months, and then send
them overseas. We're very excited because we think we will get some good short
term results out of these projects."
Much good science is being done. The electronics industry is interested in
work done by the Advanced Technologies Development Centre in Algeria, which uses
an ultraviolet laser set-up to vaporize metals, forming ultrathin
layers of unique materials.
Egypt's National Institute of Laser Enhanced Science (NILES) "is very
beautiful. Their expertise is in medicine, such as opthamology and
photodynamic therapy for skin cancer," said Professor Paul Buah Bassuah of
the Laser and Fibre Optic Centre at Ghana's University of Cape Coast.
"Now if you come back to Ghana, most of our people build houses with mud
and it will surprise you to know the homes have radon emissions. Using laser
imaging we have been able to count the alpha particles effectively and image
process this and it is really the first of its kind. We can say if the home is
habitable or not habitable."
Dr Philemon Mjwara, director of South Africa's National Laser Centre, has an
unusual advantage in the equipment stakes. Mjwara inherited equipment from the
apartheid-era Atomic Energy Corporation's project to separate uranium isotopes
for nuclear power plants. "Three years ago, we created a rental pool for
lasers. When we began, only two universities had their own lasers. Now a dozen
universities and technikons have them. Now, this rental pool will be available
for universities and research institutes outside South
Africa's borders."
The haemorraging of staff to overseas institutions continues so the African
Laser Centre will be offering lectureships, internships and a menu of
doctoral sandwiches, so that if a Namibian student is interested in doing a
laser physics Phd, he or she could come to South Africa for the practical
segment of the course and return home for the theoretical component,
hopefully with some new equipment for the physics department in the airplane
baggage hold!
More information:
South Africa: www.nlcsa.co.za
Senegal: www.lamnetwork.org/activity.html
Algeria: www.cdta.dz
CSIR: www.csir.co.za
NEPAD: www.nepad.org
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