OPINION: What do the Black Panther and Arthur Mutambara have in common? Science. Though one is fiction, and the other is somewhat fiction, writes VICTOR KGOMOESWANA.
Chadwick Boseman and Arthur Mutambara are taller than 1.8m - cut in the mould of your typical tall, dark and handsome - if you are that way inclined. Boseman was T’Challa, the Black Panther in last year’s sci-fi movie and Mutambara the erstwhile leader of Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Watching the Black Panther film that gripped the world with its Wakanda craze, portraying a fictional innovation valley in Africa, left me comparing the two men.
What if Mutambara had taken robotics a step closer to his fellow Merton alumni? This British alma mater - Merton College at Oxford - has a knack of producing outliers who have collected a few Nobel Prizes. In 1921, Frederick Soddy received a Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nikolaas Tinbergen matched that in 1973, but for physiology, followed by Anthony James Leggett for physics in 2003.My senseless musing was more strident on Wednesday when a Wakanda-like headline blazed the African skyline.
My luck saw me visit Zipline’s dispatch centre in Muhanga, Rwanda, last year. From there, the company delivers blood to 21 hospitals nationally using unmanned aerial vehicles - fancy aviation parlance for drones. Zipline, said Rinaudo, completed 4 000 life-saving emergency deliveries last year. The new centre in Ghana, he adds, will be able to do 20 times that. Each centre will be equipped with 30 drones, giving it capacity to deliver to 2000 health facilities - dispatching 148 different vaccines, blood and medicines to people who need them.
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