Relying on donor funding means that the funder ultimately determines the health priorities. This is one reason why many programmes in Africa focus on a single disease such as HIV.
Most healers still practice in their houses where there is little privacy. Others use more private backrooms. But these spaces were not designed for the practice of traditional medicine.
Empatheatre’s latest production is more than a play about three characters who live near the sea. It’s a model for collective consultation on how to save the ocean.
His life’s work was asserting the humanity and history of the Bantu people, while proposing that the soul was able to bring knowledge of the past and of the future into the present.
Joseph Shabalala would grow world famous for his music. But it is shaped by the spiritual aspects of his life as much as it is by the hardships of black life - and by his dreams.
In the 1950s, the African yam was exploited by drugs firm Boots to produce cortisone. But South Africans fought back against the plundering of a plant that they used for traditional healing.
Arnaud Exbalin, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris Lumières
Before being qualified as “magic”, certain mushrooms were considered sacred by the ancient peoples of Mexico. We explore their history and relationship to Mesoamerican religion and medicine.
Koro is widely believed to be a culturally localised delusion. But a theory that it’s a fight-or-flight reflex might be corroborated by studying traditional healing treatments in Indonesia.
Connie Nshemereirwe, The Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR)
Africa’s complex and seemingly insurmountable social and economic problems are a golden opportunity to demonstrate the value that research can bring. Scientists need to rise to the challenge.