My first book Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa (University of Chicago, 2014) considers how African scientists, grandmothers, plant sellers, and pharmaceutical companies sought to transform six plants found in African countries into new medications. In the process of transforming plants into pills, not all people benefited equally.

My second book Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence (Cambridge University Press, 2019) considers how nuclear physicists in Ghana sought to transform a suburb outside of the capital city Accra into the center of Africa’s nuclear program. This study also considers the historical tensions between Ghanaian scientists and the every day people living close to the nuclear power reactor at Kwabenya to understand the parameters of scientific equity in an African setting.