SA, OZ exchange insults over SKA

SA, with eight other African countries, is competing against Australia and New Zealand to host the project. In April, after the non-profit SKA Organisation's bidding announcement was delayed until mid-May, the Sydney Morning Herald released what it said were the findings of the report, which made it clear that the SA bid was the better of the two. Since then many people on both sides have rubbished the validity of this leak.

SA's SKA site bid manager Adrian Tiplady told parliament that "no amount of financial investment could ever buy" the advantages the country enjoyed over Australia, which included the extreme quiet of the Karoo and the lack of radio signals in the area. The Australian then quoted Australia's science minister, Chris Evans, as saying: "The thing that works against us the most is the ­sympathy for doing more in Africa - the European view that says we ought to be doing more development in Africa."

Naledi Pandor, the minister of science & technology, said Evans's comments "reflect an inadequate understanding of where Africa is today," adding that the attacks aimed to "diminish SA's scientific superiority" and "undermine the scientific and technical rigour of the site adjudication process," TechCentral reports.

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