L-R: Dr Akan Odon; Prof. Nyaudoh Ndaeyo, Dr. Edu Inam and Prof. Kirk Semple
The Vice Chancellor, University of Uyo, Professor Nyaudoh U. Ndaeyo was among dignitaries invited to attend the high-level final meeting of the Recirculate Project in Accra, Ghana. The meeting was held in Marriot Hotel Accra from 16th to 17th March 2022.
RECIRCULATE is a £7M project funded by UK Research and Innovation through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) to support new partnership-based approaches to enable African researchers to grow transformational impact through working with, in and for their communities and developing robust, durable and equitable partnerships with UK researchers.
The event featured presentations by the different project partners across Africa in the four work packages of the project. The project lead, Professor Kirk Semple in his welcome remarks underscored the importance of eco-innovation in driving Africa’s capacity building for a safe circular water economy. He appreciated all the partners for their various contributions in making the project successful. In a close door meeting, Prof Kirk introduced the next initiative to replace Recirculate to be known as ‘African Research and Innovation Collaborative Partnership (ARIC)’. The initiative would be formally lunched in June in Lancaster, United Kingdom. The University of Uyo, University of Lagos and University of Benin are the selected Universities in Nigeria to be part of ARIC. ARIC is expected to be in a leading position to bid for large international project opportunities from the UK government, the European Union and the World bank among others.
The Vice chancellor commended the Project Team and expreesed UNIUYO’s readiness to partner with Lancaster University in the new ARIC initiative. In the VC’s entourage was Dr. Edu Inam, ICEESR Director. Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) is an academic partner of ICEESR since 2016.