Building infrastructure
Equipment donation
We collect fully functioning second hand equipments from universities all around the globe, and we distribute these equipments to African universities who request that type of equipment.
Why it is important?
Many researchers in Africa have ideas that could lead to life-changing discoveries. Many of these researchers attend to top-level international courses and lab exchanges in the USA or Europe and come back with knowledge on how to make them happen. However, they often face the hard reality that their home institution lacks the facilities required to carry out the necessary experiments. We aim at helping them by establishing top-level research facilities across the continent.
Why it is unique
Unlike other donation programs our donations always come with how-to knowledge, and we keep track that the equipment donated is being put to good use.
Who do we target
Institutions with a strong motivation and that are willing and able to leverage our donations to actively promote scientific research and teaching on-site.
Scalable
As anyone who works in a Western lab will know, there is usually a huge amount of unused but perfectly working equipment sitting on shelves or storage facilities, gathering dust. At the same time, the African university landscape is ever-expanding, yet often chronically underfunded. Therefore, our distribution model is massively scalable, all we need is more and more volunteers pulling together to locate equipment and coordinate the shipments.
Would you like to donate equipment?
If you, your institution or company is able to provide any equipment towards this cause (Amplifiers, AD Boards, Microscopes, Cameras, Pipettes, Thermocyclers, Gel Chambers, Computers (esp. Laptops), Textbooks etc) please contact us
Building Infrastructure: We support the establishment of research facilities.
We help building infrastructure by donating equipment to labs across the continent through equipment grants and donations. We want to avoid sending equipment that will be left un-used due to lack of knowledge on how to use it, or lack of resources to maintain it. Therefore, we only send equipment to those places where we can send volunteers to organize an intensive course and teach local researchers how to make best use of the equipment. Alternatively, we also donate equipment to labs when our volunteers can assess first hand that the local knowledge is already in place.
We work with a “permanent loan” scheme, by which the equipment is formally owned by TReND in Africa, but it is given to African institutions as a “permanent loan”. This means that the material will stay at the original host institution unless we find a strong reason to retrieve it from there, such as misuse of the equipment by the host institution. In this way we ensure not only that the knowledge and infrastructure is in place for the correct use of the donated equipment, but also that it continues to be operational and in good shape for the years to come.
Our policy is that any of the facilities that TReND has helped to build need to be open for its use by any African researcher willing to do so. Our vision is to create hot-spots within the continent, in such a way that when a researcher in an African country wants to carry out some experiments the nearest facility to do so will be closer to them than traveling to the USA or Europe.
This is how you can help African Science Thrive!
Sustainable development requires investment in higher education and science innovation. TReND runs a wide range of educational activities, and supports the establishment of scientific facilities across the continent by leveraging low cost approaches to innovation and research.
We need your help!
Can you serve as a local contact point for your department to coordinate the collection and shipping of unused lab-equipment for our African partners?
This rewarding role entails:
- Spread the word in your lab and neighbouring labs about TReND so equipment that is still fully functional but is not used anymore or gets replaced does not end up in the bin!
- Find a place to store this equipment locally for a short time period
- Fill in our automated database form to help update our equipment database
- After we find a suitable African partner, help us to coordinate the packaging and shipping of the equipment
Reach us at equipment@trendinafrica.org for further information
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The Equipment Team
Carola Yovanovich
Equipment Coordinator
Support
TReND in Africa
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