Abstract

Today’s panel brings together leading life-scientists with extensive experience from health research and laboratory work, and the making of laboratories in Africa, and anthropologists and historians of African science, to address questions of the past and future of labs as scientific infrastructure in Africa: What have been the obstacles to building up lab infrastructures in Africa, and how might these change? What has motivated the creation of labs in Africa? How have developments in scientific and health technology, from scientific miniaturisation (test kits, mobile phone diagnostics…) to networked extension of science (data pooling, multi-site research consortia…), changed what counts as an effective lab in Africa? What futures do African laboratories hold, what labs will be needed in the future, and how does one build, a century or more into the ‘African laboratory’, laboratory infrastructure that is relevant to African needs and materially and scientifically sustainable?