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Claire David
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Science & Technology Week

Promoting a scientific culture among young people in the DRC

Visiting schools attend the Village of Sciences at the Institute de la Gombe in Kinshasa.
Visiting schools attend the Village of Sciences at the Institute de la Gombe in Kinshasa.

The Semaine de la Science et des Technologies (SST) ↗ is a festival organized in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This event has three objectives:

  1. To develop a scientific and technological culture in Africa
  2. To promote African knowledge and know-how in these fields
  3. Above all: to encourage vocations

The motto:

Science is fun, join us!

The figure behind this event: Professor Raïssa Malu. Physicist and author born in Kinshasa, she is the founder and director of the non-profit association Investing In People, one of the SST organizers.

I met Raïssa Malu at the African School of Physics of December 2022 (ASP2022) and she invited me for the special 10th edition in April 2023. I had the honour to be a keynote speaker and showcase the ATLAS and DUNE experiments at universities in Kinshasa and Mbanza-Ngungu. The SST scientific director Dora Muanda trained volunteering local students to prepare and animate booths at the Village of Sciences. A total of 500 nearby schools visited the Institut de la Gombe over two days. I had the privilege to showcase CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and the ATLAS Experiment to more than 10,000 students!

The festival is much more than the Village of Sciences: there were conferences, panels, opening and closing ceremonies.

One of the 500 schools visiting the Village of Sciences and attentively listening to my speech on subatomic physics at the CERN and ATLAS booth (with a DIY cardboard scattering demonstrator on the right).
One of the 500 schools visiting the Village of Sciences and attentively listening to my speech on subatomic physics at the CERN and ATLAS booth (with a DIY cardboard scattering demonstrator on the right).
Summary of the 2023 edition ↗
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