A few academics have recently grasped the opportunity of contributing to The Conversation Africa and are reaping the rewards for their effort.

The website is aimed at bridging the divide between academics and journalists by making research more understandable and widely publicised on media platforms.

Academics register and declare their research interest or suggest a topic and then work closely with an experienced editor to produce a news article which gets published on the site.

Director of F’Sati, Prof Robert Van Zyl knows first-hand the benefit of getting published on The Conversation Africa. A piece he wrote on the space race in Africa was republished in a full page article in the Mail and Guardian, was declared an Editors pick by Tech Central and was also published on the World Economic Forum’s website ahead of their African conference in Cape Town.

Van Zyl says he never expected that much traction from one story and is already planning his next one.

“It just shows what an article on The Conversation can mean,” he says.

Prof Janet Condy was the first person from CPUT to get published. She wrote a very personal piece on her experience using digital storytelling to overcome racial barriers in the classroom.

Condy says all academics should register and at least attempt to write a story.

“If I can do it so can everyone. The benefits of this kind of platform is that my research can get out to many more people faster than if I had to publish it. It’s great that we can share snippets of our research with interested people,” she says.

Register on The Conversation here http://bit.ly/1KZaoy9

Check out the website here https://theconversation.com/africa