Episode Tendai Muronzi

“My two-month exchange at the University of Bern has helped me to attain outputs that I have taken back to South Africa and also an insight into what it means to do research outside Africa.”

Recording date: 17.09.2025

Moderator: Djouroukoro Diallo. Production: Patricia Teixidor.

Music: Intro and outro: "Yadina" (xylophone duet). CD 1. MBUDI MBUDI NA MHANGA-NYMBO ZA WADODO. The Musical Universe of the Wagogo Children from Tanzania ©PoloVallejo. Musical pauses: Portland Kora Project-May 2017. Free Music Archive, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Originating from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Tendai is a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Unit in Bioinformatics at Rhodes University, South Africa, which is part of the ARUA-The Guild Clusters of Research Excellence (CoRE). She holds a PhD in Bioinformatics and specialises in drug discovery and protein–protein interactions, with a focus on elucidating mechanisms of pathogenicity and identifying therapeutic targets for malaria, rare diseases, and neglected tropical diseases. Her research is grounded in structural bioinformatics, encompassing mutational analysis, homology modelling, protein network analysis, and molecular dynamics simulations, with an interest in membrane protein systems.
In 2025, she undertook a two-month research exchange facilitated by the CoRE Genomics for Health in Africa (GHA) at the University of Bern, Institute of Cell Biology, under Prof. Dr Carmen Faso, where she received hands-on training in protein purification for malarial drug discovery. During her visit, she shared insights into her research work and reflected on her scientific experience in Bern. She regards this exchange as a fruitful and formative step in her career and remains strongly committed to continuous learning, viewing scientific development as a lifelong process.

Members of the Initiative Afrique community at the University of Bern (Switzerland) introduce themselves in a series of podcasts.

Episode Tevodai Mambai

Recording date: 10.07.2025

Language: French

Moderator: Djouroukoro Diallo. Production: Patricia Teixidor

Music: Intro and outro: "Yadina" (xylophone duet). CD 1. MBUDI MBUDI NA MHANGA-NYMBO ZA WADODO. The Musical Universe of the Wagogo Children from Tanzania ©PoloVallejo. Musical pauses: Ethnic, by Sneaky Club; Village, by Sneaky Club. Free Music Archive.

Tevodai Mambai was borned at Mokolo, in Camerun and arrived in Bern in 2022. He has been pursuing his PhD research at the University of Bern at the Institute of Germanic Languages and Literatures.

He studied German language and literature, education and didactics at the University of Yaoundé and worked for several years as a secondary school teacher of German as a foreign language in Maroua, Cameroon. He completed his master's degree at the University of Maroua with a thesis on the modernization and Christianization of the mountain people of northern Cameroon based on the travelogues of the Swiss travel writer and filmmaker René Gardi. He examines how mountain dwellers in North Cameroon and North-East Nigeria were depicted in Swiss and German-language travel and mission reports from 1940 until 1990.

There is extensive information about his research in this article by UniAktuelle: https://www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch/2024/berner_reisende_afrika_essay_tevodai/index_eng.html

He feels that African researchers like him have new insights to contribute to the University’s landscape; “we have our own opinions, experiences, beliefs and way of doing things”.

Members of the Initiative Afrique community at the University of Bern (Switzerland) introduce themselves in a series of podcasts.

Recording date: 02.07.2025.

Moderator: Djouroukoro Diallo. Production: Patricia Teixidor.

Music: Intro and outro: "Yadina" (xylophone duet). CD 1. MBUDI MBUDI NA MHANGA-NYMBO ZA WADODO. The Musical Universe of the Wagogo Children from Tanzania. ©PoloVallejo. Musical pauses: Free Music Archive.

Pooja Singh – “The time is right for capacity building in Africa so we can take control of our scientific landscape

Pooja Singh is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern, where she works on the genomics of cichlid populations and speciation. She is an evolutionary biologist from Botswana, living and working in Bern for the past four years. Growing up surrounded by nature in Botswana inspired her to become a biologist and to explore how wildlife systems function.

She feels strongly about representing Africa as a scientist. For her, being an African woman in science is deeply meaningful, precisely because there are still so few. She suggested that Initiative Afrique could support African PhD students and postdocs in navigating the European and Swiss academic environment, as well as the funding landscape. “We need to create longer-term and permanent positions for African leaders at the University, because there are literally only a handful…”

She would like to play a larger role in promoting equitable research partnerships between Africa and the University of Bern.

More info about her research here.

Members of the Initiative Afrique community at the University of Bern (Switzerland) introduce themselves in a series of podcasts.