Smithsonian August 1998 In Camping With the Prince, journalist Thomas A. Bass explores African science in a collection of profiles, describing the heroic work of both Western scientists working in Africa and Africans who are creating their own scientific institutions and traditions. The book was written in the late 1980s and well deserves republication now. Bass’ theme is the need for science to grow African roots rather than transplanting Western assumptions, a process that is full of surprises and new insights.

Visiting laboratories and deserts with Bass, we find that the nomads usually blamed for overgrazing and desertification are actually better at preserving arid lands than the governments and development agencies who resettle them. We learn that famines are caused not by drought but by breakdowns in economic relations (there’s often plenty of food in the markets, but starving herders can’t afford it because the price of their cattle has plunged). And we find that some green revolution crops requiring fertilizers and pesticides may end up feeding fewer people than the indigenous varieties they replace.

Bass visits a wide array of successful research projects, from work on pheromones and tsetse flies to studies of termites and viruses. Termites, he tells us, are the oldest type of organized community on earth, and in Africa the termites and ants outweigh all mammals put together. They would seem to be a natural resource, but one research project, designed to harness termite enzymes that extract energy from cellulose, didn’t lead to any practical application: “Termites proved too clever for us,� the scientists concede.

The scientists are the heroes of Bass’ accounts, but too often there are villains in the ranks of government bureaucrats and international development experts who fail to support the findings of African science. As one researcher puts it, “Even if you know what needs to done, the powers that ve won’t necessarily allow you to do it.� And as a nomad says to a researcher who proposes a new system for surviving droughts, “Your plan sounds very good. But I doubt that anyone would ever do anything so sensible.�

—Smithsonian August 1998