The 2019 IEEE PES/IAS Power Africa conference was held at the beautiful city of Abuja, Nigeria between the 20th to 24th August. Power experts, students, young professionals, government agencies, researchers and industry leaders assembled in the capital city of Nigeria during the conference. The first Panel sessions on day 1 of the Power Africa Conference was jointly sponsored by the Industry Engagement Committee and IEEE young professionals. It was attended by over 200 plus conference Attendees and also it was open to over 60+ non-conference Attendees. The panel session was the last activity of day 1 after which a cocktail Welcome party for power Africa was held.
The event commenced around 5:30pm (UTC+1) after the Tutorial sessions at the Auditorium. The title was “Harnessing Indigenous Talents for Sustainable Development”. The session was moderated by Engr. John Funso Adebayo providing the brief about the topic and further invite the panellist to the stage for the discussions. The Panelist are Mr. Aliyu Folorunsho (MD/CEO of Telnet), Dr Joyce Wigwe ( General Electric Africa) providing legal and regulatory perspective, Prof. Gloria Chukwudebe (Africa Area Chair) providing the academia angel and bridging the gap with the industry and Philippa Ngaju Makobore (UIRI) providing research and development perspective.
Each Panellist was provided with 5-7 mins to express his or her view on the topic and moderator further engage them with questions on topic. Audience were provided with opportunity to contribute. Amongst many contributors is Co-Founder of ISV Robin Podmore and Energy Expert Bai Blyden. Participants were satisfied with the take home from and session with the zeal to apply lesson learnt for their day to day activities.
by Abdullateef Aliyu
