11/09/2026
Professor Emeka E. Oguzie, FAS, Director of the Africa Centre of Excellence in Future Energies and Electrochemical Systems (ACE-FUELS) at FUTO, has just returned from the Ayrton–AfOx Academic Symposium at the University of Oxford, where he served on the opening panel.
His argument, in short: the world's research on next-generation solar technology has been carried out in temperate laboratories and tested against temperate conditions. International qualification standards include cooling modules to -40 °C, a temperature Nigeria has never recorded, while the humidity range in which the science was done is far below what Owerri experiences for much of the year.
"None of these gaps exists because the questions are uninteresting," he told the symposium. "They exist because the people with the equipment are not standing in the conditions that make the questions urgent."
He also made the case that training Africa's youth population of over one billion in energy technology cannot be done the way digital skills training is done, because you cannot learn to build a solar cell or test a battery on a screen. It requires equipped laboratories, and Africa does not yet have nearly enough of them. He called for collaboration and cooperation to ensure that existing facilities like ACE-FUELS Electrolab X are optimally utilized.
Read the full report 👉
https://bit.ly/Oxford-Ayrton-Sympo
