Into Africa

Last summer, in a rural South African village, Carolyn Schlicht (Sociology ’05) talked about life’s basic necessities with the villagers who gathered in the dirt yards outside their huts.

“We asked how they got their water, their fuel, how they lived day to day,” Schlicht said. The women explained that they spent all day pumping water, collecting firewood and tending the children while their husbands worked in far-off cities. “It was like stepping into a different world,” Schlicht said. “Going to Africa and seeing how those people live made me think about my own life and what I take for granted.”

Schlicht was traveling with an environmental sciences class, “People, Culture and Environment of South Africa.” Participants in the three-week, four-credit program studied in classrooms and worked at far-flung research sites. Her time in Africa had such an impact on Schlicht that she’s now reconsidering her post-graduation future: after fulfilling her ROTC commitment, she wants to join the Peace Corps and return to work in Africa.

Courses like this are opening students’ eyes to Africa — its wonders as well as its woes — but student exchange is just one part of a large, multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary push that is taking U.Va. students and faculty into Africa to study the region through the lenses of history, anthropology, sociology, commerce, architecture, medicine and the environment. The initiative includes in-the-field research, tele-education programs and a consortium that links U.Va. to four universities in South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique.

Bob Swap (Environmental Sciences ’87, MS ’90, PhD ’96), the U.Va. research assistant professor who directs much of the work, calls the Africa initiative “a beast like no one here has seen before.”

The initiative got its start more than three decades ago when U.Va. environmental scientist Mike Garstang began studying the atmosphere over southern Africa. The groundwork he laid through personal relationships with faculty there became fertile soil for other U.Va. researchers who saw in southern Africa a region rich with research opportunities.

Swap is one of the beneficiaries of Garstang’s pioneering efforts. In 2000, he led an international team of scientists on the Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000), a massive field campaign in which more than 200 scientists gathered data to study how atmospheric change in southern Africa affects its ecosystems. Swap and his colleagues received a public service medal from NASA for their contribution to NASA’s research mission through SAFARI 2000.

The potential benefits of the study can be counted in human lives: a better understanding of southern Africa’s climate can help policy-makers protect civilians from flooding, drought and disease. Swap said, “There’s an opportunity to take the knowledge we have here and apply it in a fashion that impacts lives.”

Mick Jagger slept here

The traveling class that included Carolyn Schlicht is just one in a series of exchange programs that have carried U.Va. students and faculty to Africa and brought Africans here.

“We’ve moved students back and forth a lot,” said Hank Shugart, W.W. Corcoran Professor of Environmental Sciences and director of U.Va.’s Global Environmental Change Program. According to Shugart, classroom learning can’t compare with the hands-on experience students get in Africa. “They’re working in a place where hippos and crocodiles and elephants are part of working in the field,” he said. Some students have toiled in the safari-like surroundings of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. “People like Mick Jagger pay $1,000 a night to sleep in these places our students are crawling around in,” Shugart said. “It’s an incredible experience for a student to have.”

Travel to and from Africa isn’t an easy commute, and that’s where tele-education comes in. In September 2001, Steve Macko, professor of environmental sciences, started a live, interactive tele-education course that linked students and faculty here with counterparts in Africa. Macko and others plan to use this teleconferencing technology — pioneered by U.Va.’s telemedicine program — to broadcast more U.Va. classes to students at universities in southern Africa

“It allows for what I’ve been calling the ‘global classroom,’” said Macko. “Students can be anywhere. Physical distance is gone.”

The global approach is working locally, too. U.Va. is now using the same technology that broadcasts science classes 7,000 miles to Africa to pipe a calculus class three miles to advanced math students at Albemarle High School.

By land and by sea

Two U.Va. professors are performing research in Africa that will provide officials with information to guide their policy-making — one working in the forest, one in the sea.

Coastal ecologist Jay Zieman has studied the marine environment in South Florida for decades, and in the coast of Mozambique he has found a perfect analog. Individual species may differ, but the marine ecology in the two locations is nearly identical.

“As we start to intensely study that area, virtually all the literature gathered in the Florida region is instantly applicable,” Zieman said. “We can take the decades of work done here and apply it there.”

Preserving Mozambique’s coastline is integral to the country’s economic health. In Mozambique, the shrimp industry accounts for 40 percent of the export economy. Other countries that rely on shrimp sales — Ecuador, Thailand, the Philippines — have in recent years created high-volume “shrimp ponds” by cutting down mangroves, only to see the ponds die out from disease. “They’ve then lost productivity for 50 to 100 years,” Zieman said.

Because Mozambique has been war-torn the last few decades, its coast has gone largely undeveloped, so there’s still an opportunity to nurture the delicate coastal ecology. “The economy of this country is tightly tied to maintaining its ecology,” Zieman said.

As Zieman plies the African coastline, environmental scientist Paul Desanker is studying the effects of global climate change on the lands of southern Africa. His research findings directly inform policy decisions. Desanker participated in the United Nations’ Climate Change Convention in 2001, and more recently in the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Desanker travels to Africa several times a year, conducting field research and forging relationships with colleagues. “I want to help developing countries to have a fair share in how they are represented in the global community,” he said. “It’s a matter of equity.”

Thinking globally

The U.Va.-Africa connection that was born 30-some years ago with a loose alliance of researchers was formalized, in July 2002, as the education and research consortium called SAVANA (Southern Africa-Virginia Networks and Associations).

Jeffrey Plank, U.Va.’s associate vice president for research, says it was a natural evolution. “By establishing an open, shared approach to data collection we were able to create something that hadn’t existed before — a democratic, equitable approach to knowledge. It made sense to take the next step, which was to look at institutional collaboration that would have its root in environmental science but would involve other parts of our universities as appropriate.”

In that spirit, the environmental sciences department is linking with other U.Va. schools and departments to create multi-disciplinary teams. “The hope is that by combining expertise we’ll find opportunities for our faculty members to achieve excellence in research,” said Plank.

The consortium links U.Va. with the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique, the University of Botswana, and the universities of Venda and the Witwatersrand in South Africa. SAVANA is helping to boost the University’s Virginia 2020 agenda, which promotes international activities.

For students like Carolyn Schlicht, Africa has been nothing short of an epiphany experience. “What I saw in Africa forced me to look at the way I live and to rethink what’s important,” she said. “It’s changed the way I look at the world and made me realize how much today’s decisions shape tomorrow’s global issues.”

Bob Swap gets a lot of satisfaction from seeing students transformed. “I feel good that these kids will never be the same.”

Timeline

1970s
Michael Garstang, U.Va. professor of environmental sciences, begins studying African atmosphere, establishes contacts at South African universities.

1980s
Faculty and student exchange with South African universities begins.

1990s
Scientists conduct the Southern African Fire-Atmosphere Research Initiative (SAFARI) in 1992. Bob Swap conducts studies at the University of Witwatersrand leading to the design of the Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000).

2000
Scientists from nine African nations, the United States, Europe and Australia participate in SAFARI 2000.

2001
U.Va. conducts first live international tele-education videoconference seminar course with the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique.

May 2002
U.Va. hosts three-day meeting and workshop to form the Southern Africa-Virginia Networks and Associations (SAVANA) consortium with four African universities.

July 2002
Consortium formally launched in Mozambique, with U.Va. represented by Vice President and Provost Gene Block.

August/September 2002
U.Va. professor Paul Desanker joins U.S. delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

October 2002
U.Va. hosts synthesis workshop of SAFARI 2000 research findings with more than 100 participants.

February 2003
As part of SAVANA consortium activities, U.Va. hosts nursing professionals from the Limpopo Province of South Africa for collaborative work.

March 2003
U.Va. course titled “The Business of Saving Nature,” hosted by SAVANA consortium, is held in South Africa during spring break.