MARKING BLACK HISTORY MONTH Equality, diversity & inclusion (EDI) is one of SKAO’s core values. With international staff from 20+ countries at the SKA HQ it’s essential that everyone feels welcome, valued, and that we fully represent and celebrate the diversity of people behind this global project. During Black History Month (BHM), which takes place every October in the UK, SKAO took the opportunity to highlight Black voices in radio astronomy, and talked to members of Team SKA about the importance of EDI efforts and training within the workplace. With its global partnership and sites in South Africa and outback Western Australia, the SKA is in a unique position among large-scale astronomy projects to focus on stories that have traditionally been under-represented in our field. As well as hearing personal experiences in a feature on the SKA website, SKAO’s EDI Working Group arranged a talk for SKA staff by Dr Sheila Kanani (see opposite), Diversity Officer at the Royal Astronomical Society, outlining recent progress in this area and discussing the challenges ahead, and shared Dr Samuel Okoye’s remarkable story (see summary on the right). Marking BHM is part of a broader effort by the SKA Organisation’s EDI Working Group to ensure that our values of equality and diversity are promoted, respected, and backed by meaningful action at every opportunity. As SKA Director-General Prof. Philip Diamond said in a statement on racism and discrimination in June: “Just writing these principles down is not enough, meaningful action is required, by me, by our team leaders and by all of SKAO’s staff.”
NIGERIA’S FIRST RADIO ASTRONOMER ADAPTED FROM ASTRONOMY & GEOPHYSICS, VOLUME 61, ISSUE 5, OCTOBER 2020 Samuel Ejikeme Okoye (1939–2009) was the first Black African astronomer to achieve a PhD in radio astronomy. He did so at the University of Cambridge in 1965, at the time when radio astronomy was beginning to reveal the highenergy universe. He went on to play a major part in establishing astronomy in Nigeria as both a discipline in itself and to drive development. But when Okoye started his career, politicians and officials in his native Nigeria believed that astronomy was an esoteric topic of little practical use (Okoye 1990). His sustained efforts to bring astronomy to Nigeria throughout Sam Okoye at the 17th IAU his career were repeatedly frustrated General Assembly in Montreal, by lack of funding and practical Canada, in 1979. Credit: AIP support, but eventually, his employer Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) John Irwin Slide Collection started teaching astronomy and space as part of its undergraduate physics course; masters and doctoral students followed. Nigeria developed a small space programme, launching its first satellite in 1996. The Space Research Centre at UNN which he founded was the forerunner of today’s Centre for Basic Space Research (CBSS) which opened in 2001, part of the National Space and Development Agency set up by the Nigerian government in 1999. Sam Okoye may have been the first Nigerian radio astronomer, but he was certainly not the last. His vision for astronomy as an end in itself and as a tool for development – in Nigeria and elsewhere – is finally being realized. Radio astronomy is taking root across the continent, not least in South Africa, home to the SKA’s dishes. The UK-led Development in Africa through Radio Astronomy (DARA; dara-project.org) is aiming to produce a technologically savvy workforce through radio astronomy. And now Nsukka is the home of the West African regional centre of the IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Development, setting the seal on this remarkable turnaround in attitudes to astronomy. Read Dr Okoye’s full profile here.
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