CNRS and Africa: a strategic co-construction

The queen termite can lay some 40,000 eggs every day for 40 years. So what is her secret? A team of researchers from France and South Africa is trying to recreate a termite's nest in the lab to understand this incredible longevity.

A Franco-Ethiopian research team is attempting to understand the complex past of Lalibela, located in Ethiopia, one of the most important Christian sites in Africa. The aim of this partnership is to identify the progressive stages of excavation of the eleven churches on the site in order to study the history of Lalibela throughout its existence. Alongside the archaeological excavations, a digitisation project is underway. Engineers are working on the internal and…

In southwestern Zimbabwe, the Matobo Hills are well-known for their thousands of rock art sites. Since 2017, a team of French and Zimbabwean archaeologists and rock art specialists have been studying these caves. Their goal is to date the paintings and identify the pictorial techniques used by Prehistorian artists. This includes analysing the many tools, ropes, and rocks found in the Pomongwe Cave, one of the richest of the area. New technologies are used to reveal paintings that…

Discovered in the 1990s, Little Foot is the most complete skeleton of an Australopithecus ever unearthed. Research continues on this exceptional fossil as scientists reveal details about her cognitive abilities using a micro-tomographic scanner.

A team of historians and archaeologists has finally found written sources that will help them write a forgotten period of Ethiopia's history. What is unexpected is that these islamic tombstones are being uncovered in the heart of what was the Christian Kingdom of medieval Ethiopia...

To address climate change, the Sahelian countries have started a forest regeneration initiative called Great Green Wall. Senegalese and French researchers participate in this programme by surveying under a cross-disciplinary perspective the impacts on local environments and societies.

The Youtube channel Zeste de science explores all aspects of scientific research, proving that even the most complicated scientific facts can be explained in less than 5 minutes, and that even the most seemingly trivial events of everyday life, if thoroughly studied, can contribute to the biggest technological advances. Episode 27: What was our planet like more than 2 billion years ago? The way we envision our planet in the past tends to change with scientific discoveries and advances…

Discovered in 1902, the ruins of Loropeni represent the only witnesses of a fortification activity in the region of Lodi, in Burkina Faso. To discover the secrets of this archaeological construction, an international research team was established. At the intersection of several disciplines and research methodologies, this team tries to understand the history of this site.

Marie Charpentier, an evolutionary biologist at the CEFE (Centre d ' Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Montpellier, France) and coordinator of the Mandrillus project (created in early 2012, until April 2013 at Lékédi Park in the province of Upper Ogowe Gabon). There, She has followed, during a year and an half, a population of mandrills in the wild in order to understand the social structure of a group and its impact on the health of its individuals. Her research focuses on the influence…

In 2004, 11 African countries have gathered to challenge a major ecological issue: the Sahel desertification. That ' s how the Great Green Wall was born. The purpose of this project is to create a vast area crossing Africa, ecologically and economically viable.

To the East of Cameroon, grouped on the roadside near a dispensary, surrounded by deforestation and the creation of cobalt mines, Baka Pygmies try to cope with the shock of modernity about which nothing has prepared them. Working with them in the village of Moangue - Le Bosquet since many years, anthropologists and filmaker deviate from their research fields and take step back to make the observation of this mutation.

South Africa has one of the richest rock art heritages in the world. Thousands of paintings and engravings are a testament to the artistic talent of the San people. To further the understanding of these paintings, a team of French and South African scientists carried out the first campaign in this country to analyse rock paintings in situ using a Raman spectrometer. This technique makes it possible to identify the pigments used in the paintings without damaging them. It is an…

Portrait de Mathieu Jacobé de Naurois lauréat de la Médaille d'Argent 2018 du CNRS, chercheur en astronomie gamma de très haute énergie au laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet (DR04) et directeur de la collaboration HESS.

An international and multidisciplinary team of researchers sets out in search of the origins of man in southern Africa, in the Aha Hills (Namibia), a limestone massif whose geological evolution provides an ideal fossil record. Paleogeological exploration of this karst landscape makes it possible to refine the speleogenesis of the caves and to precisely locate the paleokarst, these cavities filled with sediments that could contain remains of ancient hominids.