Two members of staff in the University, Dr. Adefunke Ayinde of the Department of Agricultural Administration, College of Agricultural Management and Rural Development (COLAMRUD), and Dr. Adebukunola Lala of the Institute of Food Security Environmental Resources and Agricultural Research (IFSERAR), have won the Climate Impacts Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement (CIRCLE) Visiting Fellowships for the “Cohort 3” programme of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU).

Dr. Ayinde’s fellowship is tenable at the University of Cape Town, South Africa while Dr. Lala would be at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Both Dons, with 10 other Nigerians from various tertiary institutions in the country, alongside 25 recipients from African countries, are to participate in the programme that is aimed at generating knowledge to effectively tackle climate change. The CIRCLE programme is an initiative of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID), to develop skills and research output of early career African researchers in the field of climate change and its local impacts on development. The programme would also work with other institutions to develop a coordinated and strategic approach to supporting early career researchers.

CIRCLE has been allocated £4.85 million over five years (2014-2018), and is managed by ACU and the African Academy of Sciences. In addition to the fellowships, an Institutional Strengthening Programme would be included, to empower the capacities of the institutions involved in the programme to provide support for early career researchers, while the positions of the researchers and their institutions within global academia would be further strengthened through guidance from the Quality Support Component and a consortium of internationally-renowned institutions, led by the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, United Kingdom. The consortium would advise on the development and dissemination of research outputs that should contribute to international discourse in the field while CIRCLE’s thematic areas include water, energy, agriculture, political economy and health, among others.