African Commonwealth Fellows pledge to become change agents, bringing business, universities and communities together to reduce environmental damage and fuel green growth.

Emmanuella (Nuella) Anasoh has worked for 11 years as a well engineer in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria.

“My industry does cause damage to the environment: I am in Lancaster to look for alternatives, for how we can do things more sustainably,” she says.

Nuella is one of three Africans visiting Lancaster University for two months as Commonwealth Professional Fellows, funded by the UK Department for International Development. They want to learn from Lancaster’s expertise in bringing academic researchers and industry together to solve environmental problems while creating jobs and growing a green economy.

Lancaster’s award-winning approach includes: matching student researchers with enterprises who have a specific issue they want researching; involving enterprises and stakeholders in designing and delivering research projects; and inviting environmental companies to take office space on campus.

“In Nigeria, industry and academics don’t talk to one another,” Nuella explains. “In my career I have never supervised a student project, we don’t have PhD researchers investigating the problems of our industry.

Nuella and the other fellows, both from African universities, are based in the Lancaster Environment Centre and have been talking to colleagues from its Enterprise & Business Partnerships team and the award winning Centre for Global Eco-innovation as well as learning about the £6.4m Recirculate project, which is using the partnerships approach to help create a safe, circular water economy in Africa.

Nuella is enthused and wants to use what she has learnt to make the operations of her own industry more sustainable.

“I want to look at how are we consuming, how are we travelling, at plastic issues as well as problems like gas flaring.”

She also hopes to get involved in renewable energy projects, in particular generating energy from waste.

“I am a chemical engineer working in energy and I had never heard of a biodigester before coming to Lancaster. Our mindset is that we drill, we bring oil to the surface and we make money. Coming here has opened my mind.” One of the big benefits she has gained from her fellowship is meeting the two other fellows: Spencer Nwangwu from Igbinedion University in Benin Province, Nigeria, and Salome Muruiki from Kenyatta University near Nairobi.

“Sitting here with Spencer and Salome has opened my eyes to where we have not done enough and has also given them an industry perspective. We have been coming up with ideas of what we can do together: I’ve told them that this is my problem, how can you get a student to resolve it.”

Spencer, a biochemist with an interest medicinal plants and agriculture, is also excited by the possibilities.

“Igbinedion University is the first private university in Nigeria and we see ourselves as a problem-solving university, so it has been very useful at Lancaster to learn about models of collaboration with industry, of co-location and co-design.

“Nuella has been wonderful coming from industry. What they think about is how to make money. I have realised that we generate a lot of sawdust in my area and so am thinking how we could use it to manufacture packaging.

“We had a session in Lancaster about woman selling bamboo bags. For us in Nigeria bamboo is a weed. Our Government has brought in a plastic bag ban, so can we start making recyclable bags from bamboo?”

Spencer said he plans to talk to his faculty about creating an office that links academics to industry.

“I have learnt that we can start small with student internships so that students don’t just spend time in industry to observe what is going on, but they go with a project to help solve the real problems that industry faces.

“Agriculture is on the rise in Nigeria, and there are concerns with pesticides use, but most of the farmers are not trained to use them so I want to look at how we are going to educate farmers. I have sent a questionnaire to one of my students to take out to farmers to find out about the kind of pesticides they are using and frequency of use.” said Spencer.

Salome, an environmental scientist at Kenyatta University, hopes that implementing what she has learnt at Lancaster will increase the employability of her students and benefit the wider community. She believes simple technologies, co-created between universities, industry and local communities, could transform the life of many Africans.

“Many people cannot afford sophisticated technology. I am interested in research with communities revolving around how to harness environmental resources to offer simple, affordable and environmentally friendly answers to the problems they face: for instance creating biogas from organic waste that enable families to cook meals, or water harvesting techniques.

“In Africa we are so wasteful. Coming here, I have heard so much about the circular economy – I didn’t know that what is considered waste can become a useful resource.”

Salome already has plans for several projects. She aims to start with changes on her own campus.

“In my country we are in denial about climate change, we don’t understand that change begins with us: it is a new mindset I am taking home. Kenyatta University become a Green University? We are renowned as the best producers of environmental graduates in Kenya but we are not doing it at home. We have a huge campus, and we dump all our waste together - we have no recycling, no landfill or incinerator. My idea is to start a small initiative working with students’ organisations and my department to separate waste, especially from student halls, and see how we can come up with a biodigester for organic waste, and use the energy produced to cook in the university kitchens and hostels.

“My eventual aim is to have recycling waste bins all over campus and to launch a campaign to sensitise the entire university community.

“In long term we need to create a centre for international collaboration. I am going to start writing projects with partners across Africa, Europe and the US.

All three fellows agree that their time in Lancaster has had a profound impact on their outlook, and how they will approach what they do.

“Lancaster has given us platform to learn knowledge transfer models, we now have to go back home to adapt them to own processes and systems,” said Nuella.