"Innovation is not simply inventing something new" - How AI-driven projects could change Bangladesh
University of Dhaka Vice-Chancellor Obaidul Islam wants artificial intelligence built for Bangladesh's own problems, not imported wholesale. A small campus robotics lab already backed by an international funder shows what that could look like, if the money follows.
A Returning Research Chair Bets on Zimbabwe's Diaspora and Its Land
Solusi University is putting more than 100 hectares of its land in rural Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, into agricultural production. Its vice-chancellor, Khumbulani Mpofu, says he also wants a 600 megawatt solar power station there. The university already runs a hatchery producing 140,000 chicks a cycle and a clinic treating 1,000 patients a month, evidence, he argues, that a rural campus can deliver at commercial scale.
A Nigerian University Built a Drone and Cold Store to Cut Post-Harvest Losses
The Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun, filed 21 patents and invention disclosures in a single academic year. Its vice-chancellor, Ezekiel Oghenyerhovwo Agbalagba, says two of the newest are ready for an industry partner: a precision-agriculture drone and a farm cold-storage unit, and he is asking investors to help take them from the university workshop to the field.
TiBeRIUM: Rethinking Titanium and Beryllium Production Through International Research
Making titanium the way industry has for eighty years means putting carbon into the process. TiBeRIUM is an international Horizon Europe consortium coordinated by TU Bergakademie Freiberg, bringing together research and industrial partners from Europe, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The project is investigating whether hydrogen can help take it out. The chemistry makes that swap harder than it sounds.