Vagalhão (capacity building) and Sol Nascente (student mobility) projects had an exciting time in September. Alongside the project we presented our first joint paper at the 5th African Conference on Environment and Water Resources Management in Gaborone, Botswana. The conference was an excellent introduction to the education and research activity and we learned a lot about the local scene and current and future educational needs. A big thank you goes to FinCEAL network and UniPID for supporting our research interests as well!
Straight after the conference we rendezvoused with UEM students and their teaching and research staff in Pretoria, South Africa as we managed to arrange a two-day excursion to SAPPI research centre there as well as mills and forestry sites in Mpumalanga province to network and learn more about sustainable forestry management from an operating company perspective. Preventing forest fires is a major concern in southern Africa and we also managed to see a fire fighting rehearsal during the visit! The visit altogether gave us a good view on industrial environmental responsibility and forestry management.
After the very inspiring excursion the whole group returned to Mozambique and Maputo for a workshop. The general outline was to discuss the students’ thesis projects and get further ideas for their literature studies that they will do in Finland. The workshop was very informative and we are eagerly anticipating for Professor Egas and the students to arrive in Finland on October 17th. Program is being finalized for their stay and it will include laboratory work, intensive study periods and several visits to industry which should be most exciting for the students to see.
Feedback from the module and the excursions has been very positive so far and we hope to keep it that way! Now that we have also made a personal contact with the students it will be even more pleasant to start working with them soon again. We look forward to welcoming our colleagues and guest students to Aalto University next week!
