Professor Sadiq Zubair Abubakar, Vice Chancellor, Capital City University, Kano believed that the Nigerian universities stand a good chance of improving their visibility through regular packaging of their activities in order to attract more knowledge sharing for world class research, exchange programmes and collaborative projects through critical communication and Networking. The Don made this known at the interaction on communication and Networking.
The Don made this known at the Interaction on Communication and Networking Strategies meeting between University World News (UWN) and some universities in Nigeria held on Wednesday 17th of May 2022 at Dawaki Road Campus, Kano.
As the world continues to face development challenges, leaders, change agents, sponsors and policy makers are increasingly hoping to get reliable solutions to human and resources development from the numerous universities around the world. However, information about the activities of many universities, including research, inventions as well as projects are rarely in the news. And when they do, the channel or reporting systems are often inappropriate. Thus, information about what universities, especially in developing countries can do, have done, or will be doing to initiate, activate, resolve and improve challenges are very difficult to come on a single platform.
Therefore, “it is important and expedient for universities to vigorously explore collaborative platforms such as the one offered by the University World News,” said Mr. Richard Griffith, the Global Sales and Marketing Director who participated in the meeting virtually. Richard explained that UWN bridges the gaps of information sharing for the transboundary and sustainable development of higher education. He said that thirty percent of the UWN audience is in Africa and Nigeria is the second-largest country for potential academic education information in Africa.
The University World News offers information-sharing platforms in podcasts, videos, hub sponsorship, and combined packages for regular information at reasonable prices. While presenting her paper, the representative of UWN at the meeting, Ms. Dulce Sliveria Lewcok who is the project manager for Africa, stressed that Nigerian universities have great potential to explore information sharing to give them the necessary and important spotlight to develop virile scientific linkages, partnership, exchange programs, etc to enhance their fortunes, visibility and output. This is more important now that the number of universities (private and public) continues to grow with the increasing number of prospective students.
In his own address, another speaker at the meeting professor Ibrahim Garba (immediate former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria), identified that Nigerian universities must take extra ordinary steps to meet the modern challenges of higher education to be able to produce employable graduates with relevant skills to be competitive. Professor Garba gave a testimony on the outcome of effective information sharing and networking with Ahmadu Bello University as a case of example where ABU Zaria collaborated with central China University Changsha to address a National need for Nigeria- operation and maintenance of the new railway network. As a result, a 3 plus 2 double joint degree is civil, transports and railway engineering was agreed open between the institutions and the two countries where a total of Ninety students and fifteen lecturers were trained. The participants at the meeting agreed that Nigerian universities must seek accessibility and improve their quality of information about their activities in order to gain more global relevance and continuously provide insights to solve human development requests.
More than ten vice-chancellors attended the meeting which ended on the 19th of May, 2022 with a courtesy visit to the palace of the Emir of Kano, His Highness, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero.
