Officials from MUST on March 10 held a meeting with Professor Salvatore Mancuso of Italy’s Palermo University to explore areas of possible collaboration.

This is the third Italian university MUST will be working with under the Italian government’s WAGON2Africa (WAter enerGy fOod Nexus 2 Africa), a 2024–2026 initiative funded by Italy's PNRR to build a sustainable research and education network between Italian and African universities. 

Coordinated by the Politecnico di Torino, the project focuses on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus (WEFN), promoting academic mobility and capacity building in Sub-Saharan and Eastern Africa. 

Key aspects of WAGON2Africa include partnership that involves 10 Italian universities, focusing advancing sustainability in agri-food, natural resources, tech, and economics.

Activities under the initiative include supporting mobility and developing training modules with the goal of establishing long-term cooperation and laying groundwork for double-degree programmes. 

Under the initiative, MUST already collaborates with universities of Bari and Foggia. 

During the meeting at MUST campus in Thyolo, Vice Chancellor Professor Address Malata said such collaborations are critical for internationalisation and urged the teams working on the program to explore more areas of collaboration.

“On our part, we will put strategic people in the team to ensure that the whole university is represented and these will make submissions to the university representatives that will travel to Italy in May so that they can represent MUST as a whole,” she said.

Professor Malata also called for action during the collaboration, saying many a times nothing much is done beyond the signing of collaboration documents.

In his speech, Professor Mancuso said his university is positioning itself in Africa as it looks at global north and global south relationships.

“I encourage the MUST team to go on the Palermo University website and understand the university so that as they travel to Italy, they have a clear picture of the potential areas of collaboration. I would also appreciate if I can be advised in advance of these areas so I can put up a team of relevant authorities or experts for fruitful discussions during the visit,” he said.

Apart from the face-to-face meeting which also included presentation from both sides, Professor Mancuso also toured some facilities at MUST and held a meeting with the university student leadership.