Africa has a high number of scientific researchers, but less than 20 % of them are women. Stereotypes and cultural expectations stop women from working in academic disciplines. As part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Africa are working to achieve gender equity and improve the quality of education.

After a group of women chemists reached out to Kit Chapman (author of Superheavy) to request a copy of his book for their college library – a college with a good representation of junior women scientists, but a small collection of books – so we got a bit carried away and thought we could send a bunch of our favourites. We'll be working with the Royal Society of Chemistry through the Pan African Chemistry Network to get the books into Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia and Nigeria. We've put together a list of books here, but please feel free to reach out and make suggestions (we're on Twitter @jesswade and @ChemistryKit). We're especially interested in books that are about or by scientists from underrepresented groups.

We're raising £2,000 to buy and ship a range of popular science books to the our colleagues. Each book on this list has inspired us and we really hope you'll help us get them to Africa.