BASF’s Kids’ Lab wins ‘Best Exhibitor’ award at Africa’s largest Science Festival.

25th March 2014

BASF’s global Kids’ Lab programme has won the “Best Exhibitor” award at SciFest Africa.  Announced at the closing ceremony of Africa’s largest science festival, the organisers of the event stated that the BASF stand embodied the objectives of Scifest.  “The BASF Kids’ Lab is what Scifest Africa is all about,” said Scifest Africa Director, Anja Fourie, “and with such a superior exhibition hosted in our premier venue, the Fountain Court, it helped us send a clear message to our visitors that the festival has changed gear in terms of quality.”

The “Best Exhibitor” award was voted by fellow exhibitors at Scifest Africa as well as the Scifest Africa permanent staff.  “Our criteria for this award require that the exhibitions which are nominated are interactive and tactile; facilitated at all times; appeal to a range of age groups; relate to the topics of the school curriculum where possible; promote careers in STEM; and are visually appealing,” said Fourie.

“The objective of the award is to reward exhibitors who host quality exhibitions and to encourage new exhibitors to aim for the quality one would expect at Africa’s leading science festival,” she said.

Following last year’s success of its Kids’ Labs workshops, where the exhibition won the “Best Newcomer” award, BASF once again presented young learners with the opportunity of experiencing hands-on chemistry experiments during the week-long festival held in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape.

Kids’ Lab is aimed at learners between the ages of 8 and 14. It enables young people to gain a better understanding of chemistry, and encourages them to find out more about the world around them. All of this is done in a fun and practical learning environment for both the learners and facilitators.

According to Joan-Maria Garcia-Girona, Head of BASF Business Center South Africa & Sub-Sahara, Kids’ Lab continues to foster young people’s interest in natural sciences, and especially in chemistry.  “The BASF team, supported by students from SciEnza, the Science Center of the University of Pretoria, is committed to making a difference to the lives of our young scientists and I would like to thank them for their enormous contribution towards generating an excitement about science amongst young learners, and, in doing so, being acknowledged by the organisers of the science festival as being the Best Exhibitors.”

BASF formed part of the German cluster of companies exhibiting at SciFest Africa 2014 which included the German Embassy, the German Development Agency, the German Academic Exchange Service, Evonik, Festo, and Siemens.

BASF also partnered with the German Embassy as a sponsor of prizes in the new “Science Slams” contest which was a prominent feature of the festival programme.  Post-graduate students from various universities presented their research projects to the audience who, in turn, gave each presenter a score based on the relevance of the topic and the presenter’s ability to communicate science clearly.  Amongst contributing towards a host of prizes presented to the final top four presenters, BASF will host the winner to a visit at one of the company’s production facilities throughout the country.