UDS/WA RILab holds innovations exhibition at Dungu campus
The West Africa Resilience Innovation Lab (WA RILab) hosted by the University for Development Studies (UDS) is to hold an Innovations Exhibition at the Dungu Campus in Tamale, on Friday, August 12, 2016.
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This is to enable university, the private sector, government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) among others to showcase innovative prototypes, projects or ideas that can be considered for funding and further incubation.
A statement issued in Tamale by the Communications Officer of the WARILab, Kamal-Deen Djabaku said all these efforts were towards strengthening the resilience of West African communities affected by rapid urbanization, climate change and food insecurity.
WARILab
WA RILab is part of the Resilient Africa Network (RAN) led by Makerere University in Kampala Uganda. RAN is one of the eight development labs within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN).
RAN is a partnership of 20 African universities in 16 countries focused on strengthening the capacities of vulnerable communities to withstand natural and man-made shocks and stressors.
One of the core objectives of RAN is to strengthen resilience at the individual, household, and community levels to natural, man-made shocks and stressors through innovative technologies and approaches to development, which will be identified, incubated, tested, scaled up and evaluated in collaboration with its partners.
The benefits
The forthcoming Innovations Exhibition is one of the opportunities through which WA RILab will identify promising innovations to benefit from the Crowd Sourcing approach (One of RAN’s approaches to sourcing for Innovations-www.ranlab.org/innovations)based on the results of the Tamale Deliberative Poll (DP) and the Intervention Strategy Workshop (ISW) priority intervention areas.
Other benefits include: Technical support from a competent research team, Capacity Building (mentorship, coaching, prepping, training in pitching etc.) Opportunities, linkages to local regional and international expertise and financial support to develop and pilot the solution or approach towards scaling.
Resilience Innovation labs
The four regional Resilience Innovation labs (RILab) within which RAN carries out its operations are: The Eastern Africa RILab-earilab.ranlab.org, Horn of Africa RILab-hoarilab.ranlab.org, Southern AfricaRILab-sarilab.ranlab.org and West Africa RILab-www.warilab.org. The West Africa RILabis located at University for Development Studies School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
The RILab has a mandate to source innovative ideas in line with RAN’s overall goal of strengthening the resilience of African communities through leveraging the multi-disciplinary expertise that exists within African Universities and communities.