On May 9th, the opening ceremony of the Seminar on Agricultural Mechanization for African Countries was held online. Prof. Hu Feng, Vice President of Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) and Prof. Bernard Aduda, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Egerton University (EU) attended the ceremony and delivered speeches.
According to Prof. Hu, NAU had a strategic plan to collaborate in agricultural education, research and extension with institutions of excellence in various regions of the world, and EU has been one of NAU’s important partners in Africa for a long time. To overcome the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, the online seminar was held for capacity development and agricultural technology transfer. Through the seminar, it was expected that Africa's agricultural production capacity can be improved, food insecurity can be eased, and a China-Africa community with a shared future for mankind can be constructed.
According to Prof. Aduda, the collaboration between NAU and EU has been in existence for more than 20 years, during which NAU has provided generous support for EU. Today’s online seminar aimed at providing an excellent opportunity for interaction between scholars and creating a forum for sharing agricultural machinery knowledge.
More than 10 experienced professors from both NAU and EU gave presentations in the seminar, which included three parts. The first part focused on soil preparation, sowing and planting machinery. The second part focused on the crop harvesting, drying or storing machinery. And the last part focused on automatic control machinery. More than 60 young faculty members and postgraduates from four universities in three countries participated in the seminar. The four universities were Egerton University in Kenya, Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania, Ambo University and Hawassa University in Ethiopia. The seminar received positive responses from participants of the four universities.
Mr. Degaga Areru from Ambo University said that the presenters were very knowledgeable and had offered valuable information on agricultural mechanization technologies. He had got so much experience and knowledge for his future career.
Mr. Tarekegn Elias from Hawassa University said that the topics were very suitable for the current utilization of agricultural mechanization in Ethiopia.
Mr. Nelson Makange from Sokoine University said that the seminar gave an insight into the trend of agricultural mechanization and opened up more areas for research and collaboration in agricultural mechanization and automation.
