ARCSSTEE received an August visitor on the 24th November, 2022 in the person of the President of the African Geophysical Society (AGS), Prof Olivier Obrou.
Prof Obrou, together with his team met with the management staff of the Centre and discussed the activities and programmes of the AGS. He stated that the AGS aims at being a dynamic, innovative, and interdisciplinary scientific association committed to the pursuit of understanding of Earth and Space for the benefit of mankind.
Prof Obrou, a senior research scientist and Professor of Physics at the Universite Felix Houphouet Boigny (FHB) of Cocody, Cote d’Ivoire explained that the main focus of AGS includes: expansion and strengthening of the study of the Earth and other planets including their environments in African continent; facilitating cooperation among scientists, national, regional and international scientific organizations, which are involved in geophysical and other related research; initiations of, as well as participation in, new research and training programs; and popularizations of various geophysical research and training programs in the African continent via scientific conferences, publications and short and long terms trainings.
He lamented the low involvement of the youths in the sciences, stating that many opt for no-science courses and reiterated the need for more work to be done in encouraging more youths to take up science-related courses.
Prof Obrou presented the activities of the society including organizing conferences, schools and workshops; production of AGS Newsletter; partnership with several international research societies (ICTP, Trieste; SCOSTEP and TWAS)
The Prof, who is strongly involved in the development of space science infrastructure in Africa for GNSS applications also intimated the Centre’s Management of the installation of the SCINDA GPS receiver and the AMBER project magnetometer in partnership with Boston College, USA. This is apart from the several Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) networks installed in several locations across West Africa.
Responding to Prof Obrou’s submission, the Deputy Director, Mrs Lami Ali-Fadiora welcomed the visitors and thanked them for deeming it fit to visit the Centre. She presented the activities and programmes of ARCSSTEE. Other management staff discussed areas where ARCSSTEE is open to collaboration with the African Geophysical Society (AGS) including membership requirements and exchange programmes. They opined that ARCSSTEE will take advantage of the visit to seek areas of research collaboration with the AGS.
