Rhodes University Distinguished Professor Tebello Nyokong said her appointment to an advisory panel for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is an opportunity to promote technology developed on the African continent.
Rhodes University Distinguished Professor Tebello Nyokong said her appointment to an advisory panel for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is an opportunity to promote technology developed on the African continent.
A past Unesco award winner, Nyokong is Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Nanotechnology and Director of the DST/ Mintek Nanotechnology Innovation Centre on the Grahamstown campus.
She joins 10 other leaders in their fields in advising the secretary general on organisational and operational aspects of proposed technology. It's a mechanism intended to support science and technology innovation to benefit the world's least developed countries.
Nyokong is the only South African selected. Still in disbelief that she was selected, Nyokong said as an African she will prioritise Africa – but not at the expense of her other duties. Among her tasks will be facilitating the diffusion and transfer of technologies, which will give her the opportunity to promote Africa and curb the one-sided transfer of technology from Europe.
“Africa has its own technologies. We just need to find them and promote them to the world,” Nyokong told Grocott's Mail this week.
Nyokong said her appointment represents recognition of the university, the Eastern Cape and South Africa as a whole.
Quoted in a media statement issued by the University, Nyokong said, “To know that the office of the United Nations Secretary-General (Ban Ki-moon) even knows that I exist was such a huge surprise and a great honour. So it goes with my belief that Rhodes University is a leading university.”
“This gives me hope that I can meaningfully be involved in mechanisms for establishing a science and technology base on the African continent.”
The advisory panel comprises members who have experience in the administrative side of science while professor Nyokong mostly works at the grass-roots level with students. She feels honoured to be representing Rhodes.
"Wherever I go, Rhodes University is present," she said. Because the University is in the Eastern Cape, she also hopes that the capabilities of the province and the small town of Grahamstown will be revealed to the world.
She hopes her appointment as a member of a panel filled with highly-respected individuals will inspire young South Africans to achieve even greater things.
