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.