International bridge builder appointed as honorary professor
International bridge builder appointed as honorary professor
Former Ambassador of the Republic of Togo and current Head of the Coordination Group Africa Competence Centres at DLR-PT Dr Gabin Ananou teaches at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences. Climate protection is the focus of new international activities.
Professor Dr Christoph Rövekamp from the BMBF gives the laudation for the "science diplomat" Gabin Ananou.
"International Science Management" is the name of the professorship based at the university's Institute for Knowledge Transfer and Digital Transformation (IWD). As a cross-faculty central institution, the IWD is the right place for Professor Ananou's teaching and research activities to radiate throughout the university.
Laudator Professor Christoph Rövekamp, Head of the Department "Energy; Hydrogen Technologies" at the BMBF has been a companion for many years and highlighted Ananou's ability to bring together very different people as one of his most outstanding talents. "You are a true bridge builder - between continents, regions and institutions, between politics, science, business and society."
As the most recent example of this bridge-building talent, Rövekamp cited the cooperation agreed in June between Mittweida University of Applied Sciences and the African climate competence centres WASCAL and SASSCAL. For more than ten years, Ananou has played a key role in coordinating the development of these BMBF-funded initiatives in 16 African countries.
Climate conference in Mittweida in 2023
Since summer this year, a bridge has been built from the African continent to Mittweida in Saxony. In a Memorandum of Understanding, the partners agreed on goals for joint cooperation against the consequences of climate change. Joint research and the exchange of young scientists are essential components. Here, the new professor has set himself a concrete goal for the coming months: Together with colleagues at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences and students from Mittweida's Global Communication in Business and Culture programme and the climate competence centres, he will prepare a German-African climate conference to be held at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences in the summer of 2023.
Personal details: Prof. Dr. h.c. Gabin Ananou
Gabin Kouévi Ananou was born in Togo on 18 February 1968 and became a German citizen in 2005. From 1997 to 2002 he was Ambassador of the Republic of Togo to the Federal Republic of Germany. "Freddy Ananou", one of his three sons is a centre-back and right-back for F.C. Hansa Rostock.
Since 2009, Gabin Ananou has been head of the coordination group at the project management agency of the German Aerospace Center in Bonn and is responsible for setting up the African Climate Competence Centres WASCAL and SASSCAL, a joint initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and sixteen countries in western and southern Africa that are responding to the challenges of global climate change. Among other things, about one thousand young scientists are supported with scholarships.
The initiative is based at the Project Management Agency of the Department of Environment, Culture and Sustainability and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Ananou received an honorary doctorate in 2019 from the Federal University of Technology Akuré (Nigeria) for his outstanding commitment to African development. He is an associate professor of international cooperation and climate diplomacy at the University of The Gambia and has been an honorary professor of international science management at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences since 2022.
Photos: Antonia Scherf, Mittweida University