Convenant University Don Calls For Evolvement Of Indigenous Ideas To Tackle Climate Change

A Partnership call for Evolvement Of Indigenous Ideas To Tackle Climate Change, during a courtesy visit to the management of Covenant University.

A call for partnership with a focus on addressing and tackling the impact of climate change as it relates to water security in the continent has gone forth from a researcher. Professor Julius Ndambuki, a Professor of Civil Engineering from Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa, made the call during a courtesy visit to the management of Covenant University.

Professor Ndambuki, who came in the company of Dr. Adekunle David of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, and Dr. Adedayo Badejo of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, said he was visiting to evolve a partnership that will develop tools that are continental specific in helping access vital data in addressing the challenge of climate change.

According to him, the partnership will help showcase research output and allow the strategic outcome of any climate needs of the continent to be addressed with a focus on the contingency of what best suits Africans.

In addition, the partnership will help foster knowledge and skill transfer through students’ mobility programmes and staff exchange initiatives between partnering institutions, as well as the evolvement of short programmes designed to upskill the capacities and capabilities of researchers and trainers from these institutions.

Professor Ndambuki said apart from Covenant University, Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) and the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB) are partner institutions that will also be part of this quadruple research partnership in Nigeria but will be expanded as progress is made.

He thanked Covenant University’s management for intervening and making his visit to Nigeria a reality and asked for a speedy engagement of a workable memorandum of understanding between partnering institutions to get the research engagement going.

Responding, the Vice-Chancellor of Covenant, Professor Abiodun H. Adebayo, noted that the three partnering institutions were all domiciled in the same geographical area in Southwest Nigeria, which will make the research endeavour easy and robust.

Professor Adebayo commended Professor Ndambuki for being a good academic mentor and for keeping in touch with those he has supervised over the years in the course of his academic life.

He said the proposed research engagement is a laudable one taking into consideration that the impact of climate change is real. According to him, "Flooding is a major challenge that the nation is grappling with, and the academia must lead the charge in bringing the attention of governments in Africa to the sensitive nature of the matter of climate action."

At the end of the visit to the university management, Professor David Omole, who will be representing Covenant University on the research partnership led the guests on a tour of the University’s Centre for Research, Innovation and Discovery (CUCRID) and the Covenant Applied Informatics and Communication Africa Centre of Excellence (CApIC-ACE).

MySchoolNews reporting.