Jewels of Africa: Citizen Science on the African Continent

In their recent publication entitled Diamonds on the Soles of their Feet, Goldin, et al.,[1] present a project on groundwater monitoring in the Hout Catchment, Limpopo. The title of the article captures the idea of wealth (democratisation of knowledge, water literacy, social justice) attributed to citizen scientists with their feet on the ground, gathering valuable information-in the case of their study-on groundwater levels and rainfall. Jewels of Africa takes up the idea of democratisation of knowledge and what we see as ‘science of the people’ within the context of the African Continent. We first present some background ideas on CS before defining CS and then, whilst acknowledging the vagaries of coming up with a CS definition, and the huge efforts made by the CS community to define CS, we offer a new and more simple working definition for CS. We then consider CS applications in general before giving nine examples within the African context. We look briefly at the potential of CS in East Africa before we make our contribution to debates around CS and propose ten guidelines which, we believe, complement the ten principles for CS proposed in 2015 by the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) but which are pertinent when considering CS projects in a developing country context.

Keywords: Citizen science, Africa, transformative, Emancipatory, Citizen science guidelines