Sustainable science across Africa

The technique is a powerful way to analyse a range of substances – it can be used in everything from environmental monitoring and food safety to forensic science and medicine.

Now, with support from a new partnership between the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Pan Africa Chemistry Network (PACN) and GlaxoSmithKline, what began as a small-scale, volunteer-led scheme in Kenya is being rolled out across Ghana, Nigeria and Ethiopia. By establishing training hubs across four countries, the partnership will allow over 400 chemists to be trained over a five-year period. Crucially the programme is now training up new volunteers to be trainers themselves, so they will be run their own programmes, passing on their skills to colleagues and students in their local area.

The first of the workshops under the new partnership took place in Nairobi in March of this year and today sees the start of the second, at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. The workshop will last a week and will not only train researchers to use the equipment and interpret the data, but will train up five new trainers, two from Nigeria and three from Ghana.

We caught up with three chemists from the UK, Ghana, and Kenya, who have been involved in the training in various ways so far.

It erupted in a kind of orange gunge all up my mum’s kitchen walls and I thought, “Oh, that’s cool!” And that’s really what got me interested in science! Looking back I wonder how I could ever have done that, but when you’re 10 you don’t know any better.

After I finished school at 18, I wanted to work and I wanted to study. Because I was still interested in science I applied for a job in the analytical department at Procter & Gamble – they told me that if I wanted to take it I had to study chemistry. So I did the equivalent of an apprenticeship, known at the time as a day-release scheme. It was only by chance that I ended up doing analytical chemistry but I discovered that I really liked it and I’ve been doing it for the last 23 years.

I worked my way around various roles and eventually ended up doing GC-MS, which I specialised in for the last 15 years at P&G. I was working with our perfumers on flavours and fragrances. We would analyse the molecules of plants, work out which were responsible for particular smells, and then reproduce them. I got to be involved in weird and wonderful projects like capturing the smell of cricket, or of the Hugo Boss racing yacht.

We completely take them for granted. In Sierra Leone the whole machine was standing idle because they didn’t have this one little thing. They also clean and pack their own glass liners (the inlet system where the sample is vapourised before chromatographic separation), whereas we would just throw them away and replace them. By going along to the courses I can get a feel for these sorts of challenges, and how we can help.

One thing that was great at the Kenya workshop was seeing the participants have the opportunity to build a network between them and realise that they all face the same challenges and experience similar things. They were all exchanging email addresses, and they’re building an inter-country, intra-continent network of skills and collaboration. Not only that but I’ve kept in touch with some of them myself and we’ve had a few emails back and forth, swapping ideas and answering questions. So it’s now an international network, and this is something I’m hoping to build on by involving more colleagues from GSK in the future. We’ve discussed possibly having a buddy system or mentoring scheme where scientists in Africa can email their counterparts in the UK with their questions or problems.

We have a large number of people at our Stevenage office who are keen to be involved in any way they can. They are currently going through a selection process so that some of them can become trainers and help us run even more workshops.

Another thing that I noticed at the last workshop was how many participants at the start of the week were nervous about touching the instrument and taking it apart, for fear of breaking it – whereas I was just in there with a spanner taking bits off. By the end of the week you could really see how that fear had been broken down and they were so much more comfortable. I’m really looking forward to seeing the participants in Ghana go through that same transformation.

GC-MS is so important in helping to deal with local issues. For example in parts of Africa there’s an issue around the counterfeiting of medicines – and with the help of GC-MS local scientists can start to address this. Science has to be built on the ground in order to do that. Some people don’t have the instruments yet, but they send their samples to other facilities to be analysed. In each case they need to understand how to prepare the samples and how to interpret the data when it comes back. For those that do have instruments, they need to know how to operate them and how to look after them to get the best data.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the pure enthusiasm of the participants. At the last workshop I felt that they so wanted to be there and they so wanted to learn. They make every moment count and they cram every single piece of information they can get. Anything we can do to pass on information is great, and we learn from them as well. For myself, I gain an understanding of what the needs are on the ground and I can take that back to GSK to work out how we can refine our programme in order to help more.

I think the programme that GSK have got with the Royal Society of Chemistry is brilliant. We’re helping to build scientific knowledge on the ground, so that local chemists can develop and analyse medicines themselves, making them where they’re needed.

I’m really looking forward to the workshop, and to getting hands-on with the training. I’ve got so much out of working on the programme so far, and I feel really lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to be involved.

Analysis revealed that Sudan IV dye (fat-soluble dye) was illegally added to the palm oil to enhance its red colour. The dye is toxic and carcinogenic and food scientists in Ghana are working hard to combat this problem, in collaboration with the FDA. GC-MS and other related techniques like LC-MS (liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry) can really help in addressing these sorts of problems, but without access to the instrument, or the technical skills for how to use it, it is very difficult to solve these problems locally.

My interest in chemistry started when I was in secondary school. Chemistry was my best subject because I had a very good teacher, and I developed a passion for it. I’ve now managed to climb the academic ladder and I am a lecturer in organic chemistry. I also help and mentor school girls studying STEM subjects.

I heard about the GC-MS workshops in Africa through the Pan Africa Chemistry Network (PACN) at a conference in Ghana in 2011, where I linked up with the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2013, after receiving an email from the PACN announcing the GC-MS workshop in Nairobi, I applied and attended. The workshop was very helpful because it was hands-on. I was able to relate the theory that I had learned to the practical side, which has re-enforced my theoretical knowledge. My teaching ability in organic research methods has also been improved.

After the workshop we were given the opportunity to comment on the training, and I asked the organisers if they could hold similar training in West Africa. This would enable more West African research scientists to participate, which would in turn improve their research and personal development. Fortunately, the PACN selected Ghana as its base for the first West Africa GC-MS training workshop, which was held last year. I was part of the local organising committee in the planning of this remarkable workshop and I also had the opportunity to attend, not as a participant but as a co-facilitator.  The idea is to train up local facilitators to take over the running of the GC-MS training in Ghana over the next few years. I am very grateful to the Royal Society of Chemistry for this great support and motivation. This workshop was mainly attended by Ghanaians and Nigerians. We received lots of feedback from them saying how much their research abilities had been improved, and how much they enjoyed taking their new-found knowledge back to the lab.

The training workshop continues this year and Dr Judith Gregory and Professor Anthony Gachanja will be the facilitators. I will be shadowing Judith in the interpretation of mass spectroscopy. I am expecting to build more knowledge and improve my skills in the handling of the instrument. The participants will also receive a real hands-on experience, helping them to understand and apply the ideas that they will learn. They will also have the opportunity to see how the instrument works and learn how to handle it, how to adjust the parameters and how to get the best results. This improved understanding will help all of us with our research work, and, for those of us who are teaching, it will help us with that a lot as well.

It is very important and necessary for institutions in Ghana to have GC-MS instruments, because we have to be doing our own research to help solve our own local problems and challenges. We will be able to do this a lot better once we have access to the analytical instruments and the training in how to use them.

The support from the Royal Society of Chemistry and GSK has helped us to form a network across Africa to share ideas and research findings, as well as planning ahead to see how best we can develop chemistry in Africa.

In particular I’m researching what we call persistent organic pollutants (POPs) – these are hazardous chemicals that don’t biodegrade, and thus remain in the environment for long periods. They are often present in pesticides and damage soil quality, so we need to engineer a means of removing them from the soil. Food shortage is a prevalent challenge facing many African countries, and maintaining soil quality is imperative in the struggle to improve sustainable food production and alleviate hunger.

GC-MS is vital in my research – I use it to identify POPs and study how they might be degraded. Before the training I only had a theoretical knowledge of the GC machine and I was having a lot of trouble getting it to work. So this programme was really timely for me! During the practical sessions I had the opportunity to practise dismantling and reassembling parts of the machine, and afterwards I was able to go back and use my new skills to solve the challenges that I was facing. Handling the different parts of the machine for myself is something that I’ll always remember.

We also had one-on-one sessions with the trainers, who gave me some suggestions on how to solve the difficulties I was having. I put these into practice and the results are awesome!

My interest in science in general and chemistry in particular was spurred on by the practical nature of the subject. As a young girl growing up in the villages of the rich agricultural Rift Valley of Kenya, I used to accompany my parents to the farm. I remember having the chance to concoct mixtures to kill the ants on the farm. The colour changes not only fascinated me but also drove me to want to discover their constituents.

By rolling out this training programme across the continent, the Royal Society of Chemistry and GSK are empowering our scientists with the knowledge, capacity and practical skills to solve African problems, as well as contributing to the generation and dissemination of global scientific knowledge.

I would gladly seize on the opportunity to participate in any future workshops, and would encourage my colleagues to do so as well. These are all great opportunities for advancing both our own research and that of other scientists.

To those who are going to the Ghana workshop, I’d say that you will benefit from the knowledgeable, sociable and adaptable workshop facilitators. You will also find a network of researchers with whom to share information and experience. After you’ve been through the programme you won’t be the same as far as your GC-MS and general chemistry knowledge is concerned. This is a golden opportunity that you can’t afford to miss!