By John Agbo Ogbodo.
Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK) in Anambra State is set to make history as it hosts the first Sahelian Africa Congress on Bamboo and Rattan (SACOBAR), between 22nd and 23rd of May, 2024 at the Main Hall of the Secretariat Building of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) situated within its main Campus in Awka.
SACOBAR 2024 is a hybrid event jointly organized by UNIZIK’s Sahelian Institute for Bamboo Research and Entrepreneurship Development (SIBRED), the Federal Ministry of Environment Abuja, the International Network of Universities and Research Centers related to bamboo with headquarters in Ecuador and the Global Centre for Bamboo and Other Non-Timber Forest Products Promotion (GFSRD), India.
The event brings together international stakeholders to network, converse, engage, and exchange knowledge needed to transform the rattan and bamboo value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa and, consequently, the Global South. As such, five hundred (500) Participants are expected to attend the hybrid event from West and Central Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Asia including guests from Canada and the USA.
The epoch-making occasion, which is a flagship outreach initiative of SIBRED will be held under the Distinguished Chairmanship of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency, Senator Kashim Shettima, GCON, while the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria will lead 16 other Ambassadors from Central and West Africa to participate at the First Annual Delegate and Partnership Meeting holden as a sideline of SACOBAR 2024.
The Honorable Minister of Environment, Alhaji Balarabe Abbas Lawal, would serve as the Chief Host, while Prof. Charles Okechukwu Esimone, FAS, the Vice Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, would serve as the Host. The Father of the Day is Chief Dr. Pete Edochie, M.O.N (Enyi).
Erudite Dr. Ratan Lal Banik is the pioneer Keynote Speaker for SACOBAR ’24. He will be speaking on the topic: “Research, knowledge transfer, and field capacity building techniques for bamboo propagation and cultivation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)”.
Born in January 1944 at Sylhet, British India, Dr. Ratan Lal Banik (retired) was the former Director and Chief Research Officer of the Bangladesh Forest Research Institute (BFRI), and Bamboo Expert for the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB), Bangladesh Forestry Master Plan. He is also a former Advisor to the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR), New Delhi for South Asia, headquartered in China.
He is one of the leading authorities in the world on bamboo forestry, silviculture and management. Our insightful Keynote Speaker has a remarkable career and educational qualifications. He studied botany at the University of Dhaka and later Natural Resource Management and Environmental Forestry at the University of Colorado in the United States. He also studied Forestry Management at the Forestry Experiment Station in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan, followed by the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada – where he studied bamboo tissue culture.
Dr. Ratan Banik is a widely travelled academician and a bamboo researcher with an eye for field observations. His areas of expertise are as follows: The conservation of species diversity and germplasm at the Bambusetum; propagation and nursery management; plantation raising and management; tissue culture and improvement; and bamboo and rattan silviculture and management. Others are: Agroforestry, horticulture, homesteading, and farm forestry; Multipurpose Trees (i.e. MPTs) including medicinal plants.
Ethnobotanist and community mobiliser on biodiversity conservation, seed orchard and tree improvement, Dr. Banik has dedicated his life to working on the improvement of bamboo forestry and the genetic enhancement of tree resources. In 1996, he spent some time in Guangzhou, China, reforesting degraded land using multipurpose species and worked on tropical agroforestry. He has experienced in bamboo biodiversity and conservation in Yunnan-Xishuangbanna, China and in Japan, Kyoto Bamboo Garden of Prof Koichro Ueda. He worked for National Geographic Television in 2008 as a Bamboo Expert, educating viewers about the biology of bamboo’s blossoming (Melocanna baccifera) in Mizoram, India.
SACOBAR ’24’s distinguished Keynote Speaker is a proud author of two (2) monographs, namely: Biology and Silviculture of Muli (Melocanna baccifera) bamboo and Silviculture of South Asian Priority Bamboos”. In a first of its kind, he prepared A Manual for Vegetative Propagation of Bamboos and Domestication and Improvement of Bamboos as INBAR/IPGRI Document in 1995 and 1997 respectively. In addition, he has authored more than eighty (80) scientific publications, the majority of which deal with different species of bamboo, their domestication, improvement, propagation, rattan, Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs), ethnobotany, etc. On Google Scholar, he presently has 1,999 citations.
Apart from the keynote speech by Dr Banik, the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc Sunny Echono, is the Lead Paper 1 presenter. His paper is entitled: “Bamboo for sustainable building constructions and architecture”. Other guest speakers include: Dr. (Mrs.)
Hajara Umar Sami (Federal Director of Forestry, Abuja), Dr. Muralidharan Enarth Maviton (Chair of INBAR Taskforce on Sustainable Bamboo Management, India), Ms. Claudia Daza Montano (Chairperson, INBAR’s Global Taskforce on Bamboo for Renewable Energy, Zurich, Switzerland), Pablo Jacome Estrella (INBAR’S Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Ecuador), Ran Lichtner (Director, Bamboo Center, Israel), Dr. Yigardu Mulatu (Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute, Addis Ababa), Mr. Micheal Kwaku (Director, INBAR West Africa Regional Office (WARO) Ghana), among other presenters at Scientific sessions.
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