Using science as tool
for social change:
The case of TReND in Africa
Written by André Maia Chagas
Science is great. We get to learn about a topic we love and see things that no one, or very few people
in the world have seen before. We try to find solutions for unanswered problems and push the bound-
aries of human knowledge a bit further and add a little bit of light to the immense darkness. If we, and
the ones that will come after us, do our jobs just right, the things we develop might end up making
lives better. These were reasons why I got into science; I thought it would be a good way to combine
something I always loved, biology, with something that could potentially improve lives around me.
A couple of years into my career, I
came to realize that although my
heart was in the right place, it was na-
ive to believe that research outcomes
would be fast and that the reach of
those outcomes would be, as a rule,
far-reaching. The progress of science
is steady, but unfortunately slow, as
it takes years, if not decades, before
a new discovery becomes a consoli-
dated piece of knowledge, or makes
its way into society as a new tool or
treatment option.
One of the reasons for this slow pace
is that science is only conducted by a
small number of people, in a limited
number of places (Figure 1). As can
be seen on the map (Figure 1), sci-
entific distribution is largely uneven
throughout the world and uncorre-
lated with the population of a coun-
try. Japan and Nigeria, for example,
have similar population sizes (~127
and 148 million people, respectively),
but very different scientific output re-
cords. The results in Nigeria seem to
be the rule rather than the exception
in the African continent. This uneven
distribution leads to, among other
things, “brain drain” where people
move out of developing coun