Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Africa’s poverty levels remain high, at 40 percent of the continent’s population, condemning millions of people to a substandard lifestyle. Innovation and willingness to cross traditional academic boundaries have become more urgent for many in the academia.

To get the perspective of a former participant of the AfricaLics Visiting Fellowship Programme (VFP), I spoke to Justina Onumah from the University of Ghana, where Justina is a PhD candidate. Justina has studied Agricultural Economics in her undergraduate and Master’s degrees, but switched to development studies for her PhD. She also works at the CSIR-Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI) in Ghana.

‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is a well-known expression, but one with pernicious effects in the context of waste. We’ve always done things a certain way. Things are made, used, and thrown away. But where do all these thrown-away things go? What do they become? What could they become? Our linear way of thinking and behaving is being increasingly criticised as landfills overflow, water supplies dry up, and air becomes unbreathable.

In August 2000, MUCED, a consortium of four Malaysian universities, was formed to encourage new interdisciplinary approaches to environmental management. The consortium was part of a project proposed and supported by the DANCED program of the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy. Randolph S. Jeremiah became the Coordinator in the Secretariat of MUCED. In this interview he points to some of the key experiences. Today, Randolph works as Head of Water Resources at ERE, a Malaysian consultant company.

It was a life changing experience to replace the warm climate of Malaysia to the more cool Scandinavian environment. When the Malaysian engineer Dr. Kumeresan did his Ph.D in Denmark, he benefitted on many levels, both professionally and personally.

A recent initiative of the first Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation in Colombia creates hope in the research-ambience in the country and expectations of stronger budgetary prioritizing of this central area for development in the country.

In September 2018, Mostafa Shehata defended his PhD Dissertation: "Newspaper and Social Network Sites in Egypt After the 2011 Revolution: Connective Action, Communication Power and Mediatization of Politics", at Roskilde University (RUC) in Denmark. He concluded that “media can provide a good space for mobilisation for a specific amount of time. But in the long run, you will need strong presence ‘on the ground’, and organisations to support your mobility and your movement”.

When Dr. Norazana Ibrahim did her Ph.D. project at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), she could confirm that agricultural waste should be an important energy resource in Malaysia. Now comes the difficult part of commercializing the technology in the Malaysian waste management industries.