Saturday 23 July 2016

A flying visit to Namibia

by Amanda Wills

Last week I travelled to Windhoek in Namibia to look at possible venues for Biohydrometallurgy '18 and Sustainable Minerals '18. I'm pleased to say that I found more than one possibility and will be announcing the dates and venue for these events in the near future.

Whilst there, I met up with Associate Professor Harmony Musiyarira, Head of the Department of Mining and Process Engineering (DMPE) at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), and Professor Jonas Addai-Mensah, formerly a Professor and Associate Director at the WARK Institute, University of South Australia, now working at NUST.

Harmony Musiyarira, Amanda Wills & Jonas Addai-Mensah
After a splendid lunch at the Avani Hotel, Harmony and Jonas drove me to the new NUST campus, which we reported on back in May, for a guided tour of the new $200MNAM DMPE building which it shares with Civil Engineering. I was much impressed by the state of the art building, and the brand new equipment it is being stocked with, with more planned for 2017-18.

Geological Lapping Machine

Harmony and Jonas pose next to the
 new column flotation cell

The brand new, state-of the-art auditorium

There are plans to expand the academic and support staff too, and a new undergraduate strand in Chemical Engineering is to be introduced in 2017, incorporated within the Process Engineering of DMPE.

Once we decide on a venue for MEI Conferences in Namibia, I am looking forward to working together with the DMPE at NUST to bring the world to Namibia - a country with huge potential.

3 comments:

  1. It is splendid to see that there will be one or more MEI conferences in Namibia in 2018/19. It’s a wonderful country with vibrant people and a dynamic young university, the Namibia University of Science and Technology [NUST], which is making a real difference in many aspects of tertiary education. Its investment in Mining and Process Engineering is exceptional with excellent facilities and great people. MEI conference attendees will thoroughly enjoy the experience.
    John Ralston, Australia

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  2. Dear Barry

    This is a great development for our Sustainable Minerals conference series. It is such a beautiful country, sustainability is such a core aspect and asset of it.

    Well done!

    This is doubly of importance to me personally as my interest in metallurgy was kindled in Tsumeb more than 50 years ago when I for the first time had beautiful copper minerals in my hand and wondered what this is all about. Furthermore, Outotec has built a copper smelter there.

    So for me it is a bit of "closing of the loop" to be able to help organise the next Sustainable Minerals conference there together with you.

    Thanks for all your and Amanda's efforts in helping promoting sustainability in minerals and metals processing. And also thanks once again for organising the excellent Sustainable Minerals 16 event in Falmouth in June.

    Kind regards

    Markus Reuter, Freiberg, Germany.

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  3. Thanks John and Markus. Yes we are very excited about the prospect of a new conference venue in such a beautiful and vibrant country.

    ReplyDelete

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