Science shops network

A science shop is a means of bringing a university and its community, including local associations, closer together through projects carried out by students as part of their training. Born in Europe in the 1970s, this concept is changing according to the context.

Under the impetus of the SOHA project, about ten science and knowledge shop projects are underway in sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa and Haiti. These projects need support: incentives, training and financial resources to carry out their first pilot projects. Here is the list of these shops in April 2019.

Benin

Burkina Faso

Burundi

Cameroon

Ivory Coast

Guinea

Haiti

Niger

Democratic Republic of Congo

Senegal

An African network of science and knowledge shops is also being set up.

This page will introduce these initiatives and provide new ones. It will also be the meeting point for all those who want to support science shops in sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa and Haiti.

In the media : News from Science Shops in sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa and Haiti

Florence Piron, Université Laval, Florence.Piron@com.ulaval.ca

At the LK8 Budapest symposium in May 2018, I had the pleasure of organizing a workshop on the first Science Shops in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti. These shops were born out of the SOHA action research project on cognitive justice and open science (http://projetsoha.org), which proposed the Science Shop concept to transform postcolonial universities into tools for sustainable local development. Over the past year or so, a few of these initiatives have progressed towards a very encouraging institutional recognition. Some of the pioneers of these Science Shops had the opportunity to meet in Dakar in December 2018, as part of an international seminar on the 3rd mission of universities, with the support of the University of Montpellier. Others will meet very soon at the Tunis Spring School organized by the INSPIRES project.
My research team supports them and accompanies them in various training, empowerment, advocacy and fundraising activities. To this end, we have undertaken to create a web page of information and resources on Science Shops in Africa and Haiti. Located at www.scienceafrique.org/scienceshops, this page will centralize information on the various initiatives and allow you to follow their adventures.
If you wish to support these Global South Science Shops financially, for example to help them carry out their first activities with CSOs in their region, the page offers you various ways to do so. This fundraising is managed by the Science and Common Good Association, a founding partner of scienceafrique.

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