Workshop Discussions

Intra-African Society Cooperation

In light of the common aspects of the challenges faced and the relative scarcity of the resources wielded by each of the societies, there was a great deal of interest in exploring ways the societies could pool their efforts to achieve some of their goals. The possibility of establishing a pan-African institution to subsume the functions of the existing societies was discussed, but ultimately rejected on the grounds that there was still a need for a uniquely national voice in each country, mainly for language and political reasons. However, it was agreed that mechanisms should be created by which the societies could coordinate their activities and share information to their mutual benefit.

Each of the eventual resolutions of the workshop reflect this desire to work more closely together on a sustained basis, including US-African cooperation as appropriate (addressed more specifically below). AAPAC, as an existing pan-African institution in the field of chemistry, emerged as a logical coordinating mechanism, and has accepted primary responsibility for organizing two of the workshop's resolutions: a) establishing a database of chemists and chemical resources in Africa, and b) publishing a new electronic newsletter with input from each of the societies. More details on all workshop resolutions follows further below.

The most ambitious potential collaborative venture discussed at the workshop was the establishment of an online African Journal of Chemistry. Creating such a journal would be a significant and difficult undertaking requiring a high level of commitment on the part of the sponsoring societies. A more detailed elaboration of the challenges and benefits, prepared by Berhanu Abegaz, is presented in Appendix D. The result of the workshop discussions, however, was an agreement that such an ambitious initiative, while potentially extremely desirable and well worth considering for the future, was beyond the immediate capacity of the workshop participants to address adequately. The electronic newsletter that the participants did agree to launch is an idea that emerged from this discussion, and can be considered a tentative first step towards a possible future journal produced jointly by the African chemical societies.