DOI: 10.1002/adma.200802222 Materials Science in the Developing World: Challenges and Perspectives for Africa** By Federico Rosei, * Lionel Vayssieres, * and Patrick Mensah* 1. Introduction ‘‘Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are’’ (Oscar Wilde) Materials—both very simple ones and composite or advanced ones—have always been important to human society, as shown by the fact that our prehistoric eras are named after the new material that defined them, e.g. the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. The present age is likely to remain known as the Advanced Materials or Nanomaterials Age. Capitalizing on the recent advent of new instrumentation for materials synthesis and characterization (including for example scanning probe microscopy techniques, which allow to visualize and modify surfaces at the atomic scale), [1] there has been a nearly explosive growth in materials science research, especially in the subfield known as nanoscience, which studies the properties of materials at the nanometer length scale. [2] Nanostructured materials are expected to provide society with radically new technologies, for instance to supply sustainable energy sources and vectors while protecting the environment as well as bring about significant advances in medicine. [3–5] Within the last decade, nanoscience has become an emerging discipline with fundamental and applied components encom- passing the physical, life,and earthsciences as well as engineering and materials science. An important aspect of nanoscience is that it bridges the crucial dimensional gap between the atomic and molecular scale of fundamental sciences and the microstructural scale of engineering and manufacturing. In this sense, it represents an opportunity to explore and link a vast amount of fundamental knowledge at the intersection of disciplines. The science of the ultrasmall is leading to new paradigms on the basic properties of materials; it is also expected to lead to the fabrication of novel high-technological devices in many fields of application from electronics to medicine. Because of its broad multidisciplinary scope this discipline is projected to increase the level of technological advance at a significantly higher rate than ever experienced in human history. As a result, the technical, educational, and societal implications of nanoscience are considered highly important, as attested by the major economic investment and the numerous national initiatives of developed and developing countries alike. [6] ESSAY [*] F. Rosei Canada Research Chair in Nanostructured Organic and Inorganic Materials Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Energie, Mate ´riaux et Te ´le ´communications Universite ´ du Que ´bec 1650 Boul. Lionel-Boulet, J3X 1S2 Varennes, QC (Canada) E-mail: rosei@emt.inrs.ca L. Vayssieres World Premier International Center for Materials NanoArchitectonics National Institute for Materials Science Namiki 1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0044 (Japan) E-mail: Vayssieres.lionel@nims.go.jp P. Mensah Formosa Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering Southern University and A&M College Baton Rouge, LA 70813 (USA) E-mail: mensah@engr.subr.edu [**] F. R. acknowledges the Canada Research Chairs program for partial salary support. The authors’ participation in MRS Africa 2007 was funded by the International Center for Materials Research (UCSB) and the International Centers for Young Scientists and for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Japan (L.V.), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs program (F.R.) and the National Science Foundation (P.F.M.). We are grateful to F. Stellacci, A. Tavares, T.W. Johnston, C. Santato, S. Minsky, R. and S. Rosei for critical readings of the manuscript and M. Arella and M. Chaker for helpful discussions. ‘‘Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call it ubuntu or botho. It means the essence of being human. You know when it is there and when it is absent. It speaks about humanness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and roughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together’’ (Desmond Tutu) Adv. Mater. 2008, 20, 4627–4640 ß 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim 4627