Why Discovery Matters: Dr. Ketevi Assamagan on the Future of African Physics

Transcript excerpts from the video:

0:54-5:19

“I went to the University of Lomé. At the time, it was a different name. The school was called University du Benin. So I did all my education up to the bachelor degree there before I got the AFGRAD scholarship … I spent two years teaching at the Collège Protechstan as a part of the agreement, so I did that. And then after the two years, I received a scholarship to come to the United States. I think it was a relief because I had finished my bachelor degree, but I didn't have any opportunity to go anywhere. I was doing physics and mathematics, and there wasn't an opportunity to go beyond the bachelor degree in that particular field at the university. So one has to either find a job, which in my field was essentially just teaching, or you find a scholarship to continue … So I spent two years doing my master's. After I have done three months of intensive English, then I started my master's degree. And I received stipend throughout that time, and also I received coverage to attend a conference during that program. And so the support was really great, actually. I don't think at the time I would have done all that as a student. First, because there was no internet, information was not easily available, and we knew French, we didn't know English, so it would have been very difficult.

Actually, it was an eye-opener for me in the sense that growing up in Africa, we learn about a lot of things in history, but not really comprehending the current state of issues, societal issues especially in the US, which from that point we regarded like that's the place you want to be as the land of opportunities. That's where things happen. If you can just get there, everything will be fine. So my experience first was to witness the societal dynamics and disparities in economic conditions of various people and interactions at the university with now a lot of different type of people.”

48:41-50:26

“First, bring together all the people interested in physics development in Africa to know each other. It has been a process where, for me personally, for instance, I know people in other fields, let's say nuclear physics or material physics. I would not have worked with them otherwise if we didn't have this process of the African strategy. So now I know those people. So that's the first thing, to really bring more people together to know each other from across different fields of physics. Then the second objective is really to inform our policymakers in Africa that here is what physicists are saying. They can have their top-down strategies, what they want to do and so forth. That's good. But we at the grassroots level, this is how we would like to inform their policy decisions. Yeah. Then maybe having those two aspects together can better define the strategic directions, which can be more impactful in Africa. So that's the sort of transformation I would like to see in the continent, where physicists are taking their role not just as educators in the classroom, but also as accomplished researchers and also people who are speaking to policy and influencing policy decision that in turn impact quality of education and quality of research, and so forth.”