East Africa Day kicks off spring’s student challenges

Aalto Global Impact organises the first East Africa Day event at Design Factory this week Friday, 12 January. The speakers feature experts from academia, business and civil society organisations.

'East Africa Day is for anyone with an interest in global development challenges. We want to strengthen the students’ project work across course boundaries and examine the case challenges in a larger societal context', says Riina Subra, Senior Manager at Aalto Global Impact.

East Africa Day kicks off the field trip preparations for several of Aalto’s multidisciplinary project courses. Over the spring semester, Aalto students will work on sustainable innovation challenges together with the local partner universities’ student teams and other stakeholders.

The cases look into food safety, participatory architecture, recycled construction materials and climate information utilisation in smallholder farming.

'The students get to, for example, research and test the usage of plastic and metal waste as a construction material in Uganda. These kinds of collisions of academic thinking and complex challenges can nurture student-developed innovations. One good example is the water filter Nanomaji', says Matleena Muhonen, Coordinator at the Sustainable Global Technologies programme.

Problem-based learning is also the central theme in the wider PBL East Africa project between Aalto University, University of Dar es Salaam, University of Nairobi and Makerere University in 2017–2020.

East Africa Day takes place at Design Factory on Otaniemi campus on 12 January. Welcome! See the event programme here.