Nearly a decade after the Global Microscience Programme was launched by UNESCO and the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in 1996, the microscience approach has been introduced into 72 countries, many of them in Africa.
The first microscience kits focused initially on the needs of secondary schools in chemistry. This was because chemicals used in laboratories not only come with a high price tag but are also hazardous and polluting. By reducing the amount of chemicals used in experimentation, the microscience kit also did away with the drawbacks of chemical use in the classroom. Nor was the expensive glass apparatus (such as beakers, flasks and pipettes) needed any longer, as the kits supply the necessary items for manipulation.
The chemistry micro-kits were manufactured by a South African company, Somerset International, and tested in a variety of South African schools. Heartened by the kits’ warm reception, RADMASTE then went on to develop kits for primary school science and for more advanced secondary school and first-year tertiary chemistry (covering electrochemistry, organic chemistry, volumetric analysis…). The Centre has also developed a range of experiments in biology that include botany, zoology and some elementary biochemistry.
‘How can any country train scientists, let alone promote the national research which is indispensable to development, without experimentation?’ says Julia Hasler, the UNESCO coordinator of the Global Microscience Programme.
For further information, click below to read one-page project document (PDF file) first presented at exhibition, Khartoum, Sudan in 2005, and/or contact: j.hasler@unesco.org
Nearly a decade after the Global Microscience Programme was launched by UNESCO and the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in 1996, the microscience approach has been introduced into 72 countries, many of them in Africa.
