The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF, has pledged to continue supporting WASCAL for the next decade, and has challenged the organization to intensify its innovative strategies to attract more partnerships for its sustainability, while overseeing the financial contributions of member countries as a way of getting countries to own and drive WASCAL as a West African organization.

This was contained in the remarks of Dr. Wilfried Kraus of BMBF in an interaction with the management, staff, students and alumni of WASCAL at its headquarters in Accra. Dr Kraus had earlier on been decorated with the honoris causa award by the University of Lome, Togo for his outstanding support and quality leadership in championing the cause of climate change in West Africa.

Dr. Kraus also assured of his Ministry’s intended increase in the number of student intake in subsequent admissions by the Capacity Building Programme. He further admonished alumni to continue striving hard to use their expertise from the Capacity Programmes for the benefit of their respective countries and West Africa as a whole.

He also tasked the Executive Management to ensure that the remaining five ECOWAS countries be brought on board to complete the vison of WASCAL. He said they should develop creative ideas in the areas Climate Change and Sustainable Land Use, and Renewable Energy Options.

Prof. Renee Haak, responsible for the implementation of WASCAL at BMBF challenged the alumni to continuously develop their creative engagements and build strong networks to develop relevant research projects for future considerations.

The students and alumni also had their turns to share their WASCAL success stories. Amongst the recommendations they shared included the need for WASCAL to integrate an entrepreneurship module in its course for self -empowerment and climate change job creation through the scientific and research knowledge acquired from the WASCAL Graduate Programmes.