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 2 minutes with... article in this edition), 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 below).

SKAO's EDI Working Group spoke to members of staff about their experience. "If you witness racist incidents or harassment of a colleague, or any individual, please speak up. Silence is complicit. If we do not stay silent in the face of racism, we can be more effective in eradicating it." says Dr Job Obiebi, System Verification Engineer at SKAO

Credit: SKAO

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."

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.

SKA Director-General Prof. Philip Diamond

Nigeria's first radio astronomer

Adapted from Astronomy & Geophysics Volume 61, Issue 5, October 2020

Sam Okoye at the 17th IAU General Assembly in Montreal, Canada in 1979

Credit: Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, John Irwin Slide Collection

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 high-energy 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 his career were repeatedly frustrated Sam Okoye at the 17th IAU by lack of funding and practical General Assembly in Montreal, support, but eventually, his employer Canada, in 1979. Credit: AIP the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) 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 in the October issue of Astronomy & Geophysics.