The Carbon Literacy for Youth Employability and Job Creation (CL4YEJC) Network Partnership team led by the Durban University of Technology (DUT) was recently honoured with three Innovation for African Universities (IAU) Oscar Awards, for having the project that has made the biggest impact. Two awards were given to the team’s Project leader, Professor Sunday Ojo for being the Best Supporting Actor who has given the most support in the IAU programme and for being the Best Costume-Best Dressed participant, proudly always dressed in his African attires.
The DUT-led Network partnership includes the Sheffield Hallam University, UK; Durban University of Technology, South Africa; Innovate Durban, South Africa; Kisii University, Kenya; and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Nigeria.
Speaking about scooping the three awards, Prof Ojo said it came as a surprise, mixed with excitement, after being a product of a voting process with hundreds of participants from the United Kingdom and the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) institutions as voters.
Prof Ojo, the Sub-Saharan Africa Project Lead, CL4YEJC Project said initially, the British Council IAU Centre of Excellence organised the online nomination and voting process, which was made open to the British Council IAU programme Community of Practice comprising all the hundreds of participants on the programme. The British Council IAU programme is the first of its kind involving the UK and SSA institutions, and so the competition was the first of its kind.
“The guiding rule was that there can be no self-nomination for individual awards, and for project award, no project team member can nominate his/her team project. So, our nomination for the awards were made by others outside our project team. Our CL4YEJC project was nominated and voted for, out of the 24 British Council funded projects. Nomination and voting for the two individual IAU Oscars awards involved IAU programme participants from 84 institutions in the UK and SSA countries. The announcement of the awards was made at the grand finale celebration virtual workshop of all IAU programme participants, held on Wednesday 28 September, 2022,” explained Prof Ojo.
He made it clear that this is in no way an individual achievement, rather it is a team and institutional effort. He expressed his gratitude to the team members; Dr Alveen Singh, Dr Ndivhuho Tsikovhi and Ms Nosipho Dube under the strategic leadership guidance of Professor Sibusiso Moyo, the DUT immediate past Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement (DVC: RIE), together with the support of DUT’s Prof Keolebogile Motaung, the present Acting DVC: RIE, and Prof Oludayo Olugbara, the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Accounting and Informatics at DUT.
“It is also due to the immense contributions of our project team members from our partner institutions. As research output from the project, we are at present working on producing publications in the form of Chapter in Book, Journal and Conference proceeding articles,” added Prof Ojo.
Passing her congratulatory remarks, the DUT Acting DVC: RIE, Professor Keolebogile Motaung said: “We are proud to know that DUT-Led Carbon Literacy for Youth Employability and Job Creation (CL4YEJC) Network Partnership Team has been awarded three IAU Oscars Awards. This exciting news of the team winning the awards has filled us with extreme joy and pleasure. It’s difficult to express this joy in terms of words. But this is through team work. I look forward to hearing about many more of the team successes. Best wishes for more successes in the future. Keep up the good work!”
Furthermore, the project theme was to leverage Carbon Literacy for Youth Employability and Job Creation, to result in providing an integrated solution to the dual challenges of Climate Change and Youth Unemployment in SSA. He pointed out that the CL4YEJC project is the first that he is leading, since joining the DUT family in January 2021.
Giving insight on the establishment of the project he said: “The CL4YEJC project journey commenced with the idea of having an integrated solution for Climate Change (CC) and Youth Employment (YE) grand challenges of SSA. The journey road seemed bumpy having to manage the multi-dimensional diversity of idiosyncrasies of project team members from four different countries, along the way. Realising the CC-YE integrated solution in the form of new knowledge area termed Carbon Literacy for Green Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CL4GIE) with the learning materials developed and made ready for youth training on a Moodle LMS platform! Having youth from Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa trained through workshop series using learning materials. Receiving their positive feedback pointing to the effectiveness of our CL4YEJC TTK. After that came the CL4GIE Dialogue Forum where the project results were presented to an audience of HEI and Ecosystem players representatives, with positive feedback received. All this culminating in the IAU Oscars Awards gives one an exciting feel-good moment!”
Prof Ojo believes that the CL4YEJC project is strongly intertwined with the DUT ENVISION2030 strategic objective of INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP where the aim is to leverage new knowledge and solutions for societal impact. He said Carbon Literacy is heralded as key player in recent, global attempts to arrest out of control climate change. Initiatives and pragmatic efforts towards increased carbon literacy of regions in the global North and West have trail-blazed far into the distance, Africa lags behind dramatically. At the same time, he indicated that soaring unemployment and underemployment of youth consistently feeds collapsing socio-economic situation.
“Sadly, in a continent rich with natural resources and a people with eager appetite for knowledge and skill, there is little by way of successful entrepreneurship and more, able citizens search for jobs that are diminishing. The CL4YEJC project strives to leverage much needed carbon emission literacy to create a seedbed for green entrepreneurial opportunities in SSA. The innovation comes from fusing carbon literacy knowledge of harmful effects and causes with a skillset to germinate an idea to a business initiative. This represents new thinking and application for two SSA grand challenges namely, climate change devastating effects and youth unemployment in SSA,” added Prof Ojo.
The next step after winning the three awards, Prof Ojo said the British Council will soon announce a Call For Proposal for a competitive Consolidator Grant to consolidate and sustain work already done during the just ending phase of the IAU programme, and deepening scope of already existing projects such as our CL4YEJC project, towards fostering a culture of entrepreneurship and Innovation within Universities in SSA. Their project team will be applying for the grant.
The road to winning was not easy, Prof Ojo said the CL4YEJC project journey has not been without its challenges. The challenges include delayed fund resulting in a setback in execution of project activities as originally scheduled, inability to procure human and material resources required for the project, timeously, as well as grappling with some creative deviations from some original project activities, by resorting to alternative options.
“The challenges also include the vagaries of partner institutional policy and procedure which are at variance with British Council Governance Rules for the project execution, staff and student unrest in partner institutions negatively impacting project activities, electricity and internet connectivity disruptions that negatively impacted effectiveness of project team members’ participation in virtual meetings, as well as managing partner diversity and project team members idiosyncrasies among the 5-partner organisation Network Partnership, amicably resolving our differences, without negatively impacting the project progress. The foregoing undoubtedly placed enormous pressure on the team members, which could have negatively impacted the project deliverables, but for the resilience and determined spirit of team members, to provide an African solution to an African problem,” reiterated Prof Ojo.
He encouraged the DUT staff and students to be immersed into research as research is one of the key pillars of every Higher Education Institution such as DUT. He believes it is through research and innovation activities that academic staff and postgraduate students advance knowledge and enhance their capacity as productive thinkers and change agents, proffering solutions to practical societal problems.
Pictured: Professor Sunday Ojo.
Simangele Zuma
