Catching up with Dr. Stephen Onakuse – Agrinatura’s new Director of Communications
We decided to catch up with Dr. Stephen Onakuse to celebrate his accession to the board of Agrinatura.
Dr. Onakuse’s appointment as the organisation’s Director of Communications comes as Agrinatura prepare to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their founding in 1988.
Designed to support agricultural development in a sustainable manner so as to improve people’s lives, Agrinatura is a grouping of 31 universities and research organisations across Europe who promote agricultural research, education and training.
The institutions involved participate in collaborative research projects that aim to provide food security and ultimately protect agricultural producers.
The Master of Sciences in Sustainable Development in Agriculture Agris Mundus programme comes under the umbrella of Agrinatura, and enables students complete the first year of their MSc in Food Business programme in UCC and the second with a sister institution abroad.
This creates unique networking opportunities for CUBS students under Dr. Onakuse’s tutelage and sees them benefit from having joint thesis supervisors.
Such has been the success of the Agris Mundus MSc, 64 students have already completed the programme, and five PhD candidates are currently in the process of completing the fully funded Agricultural Transformation by Innovation programme.
Students involved also have the opportunity to conduct field work in tropical countries as a means of identifying and critically analysing key factors that shape the development of crop, food innovation, forest, agribusiness and animal production.
The data generated by student researchers is mined by analysts who contribute to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals that hope to end poverty and hunger while also promoting sustainable development and conservation.
The contribution of CUBS has been such that UCC will become the Headquarters for the Agris Mundus programme in 2018.