In a significant move to foster international collaborations and enhance research capabilities, a team from the Centre for Dryland Agriculture (CDA), led by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Sagir Adamu Abbas, recently embarked on a partnership visit to some leading UK universities.
The visits aimed to strengthen the existing partnerships and explore avenues for joint teaching and supervision, staff and student exchange, cutting-edge research, and establishing long-term partnerships that would benefit both institutions.
Other members of the team were the Director of CDA, Professor Jibrin M. Jibrin, the Deputy Director (Training), Prof. S. G. Mohammed, the Deputy Director (Outreach and Publications), Prof. A. Mustapha, and the Dean of the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Science, Prof. A. S. Barau.
The visit started with the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) at the University of Greenwich, which has been a long-standing partner of the CDA. In 2017, NRI academics conducted the first international gap assessment of the CDA programmes and curricula prior to a review in 2018. This eventually led to international accreditation for the CDA programmes. Academics from BUK and NRI have collaborated in grant seeking and research.
Recently, NRI has been hosting and co-supervising CDA’s PASET PhD students in a sandwich programme, while CDA is hosting NRI’s postdoctoral fellows. Professor Ben Bennet and other staff of the institute welcomed the BUK team. Discussions were centered on strengthening the partnership to explore other areas, including online teaching, collaborative research, and opportunities for student and faculty exchange programs. The BUK team was taken on a tour of the Food Science and Nutrition Laboratory at the institute.
At the University of York, the team was received by Elisha Witcomb (Global Partnership Manager) and Prof Lindsay Stranger, who serves as a member of the CDA Scientific Board, co-supervisor of some postgraduate students and a partner in several CDA’s research projects.
Presentations were made by Professor Jane Hill (Deputy Head of Department and Chair of Research Committee, Biology), Professor Johan Kuyienstierna (Stokholm Environmental Institute), Professor Rob Merchant (York Environmental Sustainability Institute) and Professor Ian Graham (Centre for Novel Agriculture Products). Discussions after the presentation were productive, focusing on the need for interdisciplinary research, air quality and emission inventory. An important outcome of this visit was the agreement on the need to be more deliberate in proposal writing and embed funding for online teaching component in proposals.
Another area of interest is for collaboration on capacity building on the use of Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) of the Stockholm Environment Institute.
The third institution visited was the Imperial College situated in the heart of London. The university, renowned for its excellence in science, engineering, and medicine, is ranked 2nd in the world and 1st in Europe by the QS World University Rankings. The BUK team was received by Prof. Richard Craster, the Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and other colleagues including Dr Martin Dallimar, who is a research partner of the CDA, formerly at the University of Leeds and now a staff of Imperial College.
There were presentations from the Centre for Environmental Policy and CABI. Both institutions agreed on the importance of fostering innovation through joint research projects, online teaching and student exchange. During the visit, opportunities to respond to a call on a grant for student exchange and project accelerator fund for a joint workshop at the Imperial College were identified. The visit concluded with a working lunch where the Vice Chancellor emphasized the importance of global partnerships in enhancing the visibility of Bayero University Kano.