Pure and Applied Chemistry

The 9th International Chemistry Conference in Africa (ICCA-9), Africa's continent-wide premier conferencing event in the chemical sciences, was this year hosted in Tanzania. Organized under the umbrella of the continent's African Association of Pure and Applied Chemistry (AAPAC), the event takes place every third year on a rotating basis, in a country so designated at the preceding meeting, with the national affiliate as hosts. This year's event was held for the first time since AAPAC instituted the series in 1990, in the scenic tourist setting of Arusha in northern Tanzania from 2-7 August 2004. That event, hailed as among the continent's most successful, was by coincidence, befittingly held at this panoramic location which has been designated as the exact Cape-to-Cairo midpoint and has as its backdrop, Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest point on the continent. The event brought together participants from over 60 countries from the five continents, and the scientific sessions included a total of over 100 lectures, presentations, and posters. The social program was structured to afford participants the opportunity to sample nature's unique and spectacular wildlife heritage in the proximity, including the world famous game parks of the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater, which have no parallel elsewhere.

The scientific coverage included topics in analytical, physical, organic, environmental, industrial, and natural products chemistry. Delegates heard from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), who sponsored the event; the Royal Society of Chemistry, from whom generous conferencing input was sourced; and the American Chemical Society, who sent representatives to grace the event; plus the local partners of the Tanzania Chemical Society (TCS), the national affiliate to IUPAC and AAPAC. The official theme of the conference, "Chemistry towards disease and poverty eradication", was more than adequately targeted by the scientific conference content, which did it justice by exploring, evaluating, and demonstrating how advances in the chemical sciences and technology form vital partnerships toward those goals across the continent. This issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry features a small selection of papers arising from the main lecture program, and serves to exemplify important features of the conference theme.

After a general assembly to elect new AAPAC office bearers for the coming triennium, the conference wound up business amidst unprecedented optimism that the road to success is always under construction, and that through this gathering we had cast off doubt, demonstrating and providing solid evidence that this activity is alive and well in all corners of the continent. With that upbeat note, delegates bade farewell to each other and to Arusha 2004, promising to gather again in three years time in Botswana for the 10th International Chemistry Conference in Africa.

Donnati M. S. Mosha

Conference Editor