Scifest Africa has taken part of its event to the township, making it easier for the local township learners to experience the laws and nature of science.

Since Scifest kicked off on Tuesday 2 March, about 300 learners from different schools in Jozana, have poured through doors at the local indoor sports centre to participate in the exciting event. This while the main festival is taking place about 4.5km away in Grahamstown.

The goal of this conference is to provide an international and interdisciplinary forum to promote a deeper understanding of diverse academic approaches to sustainability science and to discuss how to design a framework for integrating and structuring knowledge on sustainability science. The thematic areas of the conference focus on the African continent and include: Africa’s green economy transition; food security and sustainable agriculture; urbanisation and sustainability, mineral resource extraction and development in Africa; and transdisciplinary research methods.

This year's Scifest Africa runs until March 8 under the theme "A matter of time". The theme was selected in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the event and will explore the creation, measurement, depiction, experience and – even – end of time.

Coordinator of the township leg of the festival, Pranesthan Govender, a biochemist and microbiology graduate, said Scifest organisers decided to host this type of festival at the local indoor sport centre to give an opportunity to those learners outside the city, within walking distance to their schools.

"It is amazing to see how excited these learners are about what they are learning here. It is actual trash that is being used here to build science experiments," said Mr Govender who is completing his internship with the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation.

Thabiso Ntloko, a teacher at the Entaba Maria primary school, concurred saying the festival was making it easier for the learners in the township to also experience for themselves how exciting science can be - something they otherwise would not have experienced had it not been for this idea.

A host of scientists and science communicators here are performing science experiments with simple gadgets and household things like flour. Dr Graham Walker of the Australian Science Circus demonstrated how flour can be used as a type of fuel. All it needs is enough oxygen to blow up but warned the learners not to try this at home.

Scifest is Africa's biggest annual science festival aimed at engaging the public in interactive events that teach about science, technology, engineering, mathematics and innovation in an informal way.