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Front Cover -- Title Page -- Half Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- List of Contributors -- List of Abbreviations -- Chapter 1: The Long History of Innovation Systems in South Africa - Mario Scerri -- Section1: Histories -- Chapter 2: Precolonial Innovations in Southern Africa from the Early Stone Age to Recent Hunting and Gathering Communities - Shadreck Chirikure, Collet Dandara and Alinah Segobye -- Chapter 3: Mining and Metallurgical Innovations in Precolonial Southern Africa - Shadreck Chirikure -- Chapter 4: Agriculture and Rainmaking - Shadreck Chirikure, Christopher Mabeza and Alinah Segobye and McEdward Murimbika -- Chapter 5: The Colonial System of Innovation - Thomas Pogue and Mario Scerri -- Chapter 6: From Union to Apartheid - Mario Scerri -- Chapter 7: Racial Capitalism, Apartheid, and the Negotiated Post-Apartheid Constitutional Democracy - Rasigan Maharajh -- Section 2: Thematic Areas -- Chapter 8: The Human Factor in the Evolution of the South African System of Innovation - Lebs Mphahlele and Mario Scerri -- Chapter 9: Measuring the South African National System of Innovation - Erika Kraemer-Mbula and Desiree Sehlapelo -- Chapter 10: Mining and the South African National System of Innovation - Thomas Pogue and Fatima Ferraz -- Chapter 11: Informal Innovations and the South African Innovation System - Erika Kraemer-Mbula -- Chapter 12: The Regional Setting of the South African System of Innovation - Mario Scerri -- Chapter 13: The Policy Environment and Policy Options for the South African System of Innovation - Mario Scerri and Rasigan Maharajh -- Endnote - Mario Scerri -- Index.

Victorian ideas on evolution had strong adherents amongst the European men and women who colonized Africa. Such individuals perceived themselves as superior and viewed African societies and cultures as primitive. Yet, some missionaries who encountered Njanja iron-workers in what is now Zimbabwe were astonished by the sophistication of their industry and even labelled it 'the Wolverhamptonof Mashonaland'. This is unexpected given the stereotypical and derogatory perception of African cultures and technologies that was deeply entrenched at the time. Throughout the 20th century, historical and archaeological research revealed that Njanja iron production was specialized and that it conferred economic power on master smelters, hence promoting their political fortunes. Despite this consistent story of successful economic specialization, the technical parameters, such as the conditions of operation in the furnaces, the quality of the ores and the skills of the smiths in manipulating furnace conditions, remain largely unknown. The results of preliminary metallurgical analyses are presented in this paper. Comparisons with the physico-chemical characteristics of slag from historical sites revealed that even though Njanja smelting was constrained by the underlying principles of the bloomery process, there were some subtle links between specialized production, efficiency in reduction and product quality.

Interest in genomics research in African populations is experiencing exponential growth. This enthusiasm stems in part from the recognition that the genomic diversity of African populations is a window of opportunity for innovations in postgenomics medicine, ecology, and evolutionary biology. The recently launched H3Africa initiative, for example, captures the energy and momentum of this interest. This interdisciplinary socio-technical analysis highlights the challenges that have beset previous genomics research activities in Africa, and looking ahead, suggests constructive ways H3Africa and similar large scale science efforts could usefully chart a new era of genomics and life sciences research in Africa that is locally productive and globally competitive. As independent African scholars and social scientists, we propose that any serious global omics science effort, including H3Africa, aiming to build genomics research capacity and capability in Africa, needs to fund the establishment of biobanks and the genomic analyses platforms within Africa. Equally they need to prioritize community engagement and bioinformatics capability and the training of African scientists on these platforms. Historically, the financial, technological, and skills imbalance between Africa and developed countries has created exploitative frameworks of collaboration where African researchers have become merely facilitators of Western funded and conceived research agendas involving offshore expatriation of samples. Not surprisingly, very little funding was allocated to infrastructure and human capital development in the past. Moving forward, capacity building should materialize throughout the entire knowledge co-production trajectory: idea generation (e.g., brainstorming workshops for innovative hypotheses development by African scientists), data generation (e.g., genome sequencing), and high-throughput data analysis and contextualization. Additionally, building skills for political science scholarship that questions the unchecked ...

The oldest known shipwreck in southern Africa was found in Namibia in 2008. Forty tons of cargo, including gold and silver coins, helped identify the ship as the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese nau (trading vessel) lost in 1533 while headed to India. The cargo included >100 elephant tusks, which we examined using paleogenomic and stable isotope analyses. Nuclear DNA identified the ivory source as African forest (Loxodonta cyclotis) rather than savanna (Loxodonta africana) elephants. Mitochondrial sequences traced them to West and not Central Africa and from ≥17 herds with distinct haplotypes. Four of the haplotypes are known from modern populations; others were potentially lost to subsequent hunting of elephants for ivory. Stable isotope analyses (δ13C and δ15N) indicated that the elephants were not from deep rainforests but from savanna and mixed habitats. Such habitats surround the Guinean forest block of West Africa and accord with the locations of major historic Portuguese trading ports. West African forest elephants currently range into savanna habitats; our findings suggest that this was not consequent to regional decimation of savanna elephants for their ivory in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the time of the Bom Jesus, ivory was a central driver in the formation of maritime trading systems connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia. Our integration of paleogenomic, archeological, and historical methods to analyze the Bom Jesus ivory provides a framework for examining vast collections of archaeological ivories around the world, in shipwrecks and other contexts. ; Supplemental Information: Document S1. Figures S1–S3, Tables S1–S5, and Supplemental References. ; US Fish and Wildlife Service African Elephant Conservation, South African Research Chairs Initiative of the National Research Foundation (NRF), Department of Science and Technology of South Africa, US Department of Agriculture, PEEC and Clark Research Support Grants, Claude Leon Foundation and the European Union. ; http://www.cell.com/current-biology/home ...

The Maritime Silk Road foregrounds the numerous networks that have been woven across oceanic geographies, tying world regions together often far more extensively than land-based routes. On the strength of the new data which has emerged in the last two decades in the form of archaeological findings, as well as new techniques such as GIS modeling, the authors collectively demonstrate the existence of a very early global maritime trade. From architecture to cuisine, and language to clothing, evidence points to early connections both within Asia and between Asia and other continents—well before European explorations of the Global South. The human stories presented here offer insights into both the extent and limits of this global exchange, showing how goods and people traveled vast distances, how they were embedded in regional networks, and how local cultures were shaped as a result