NANO Webinar: Building a Global Ocean Science Community through Summer Schools in West Africa, East Africa, and Beyond
Format: Virtual
Date and time
Friday 13 November 2026, 9:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada).
About this event
Prof Brian Arbic (University of Michigan) and Dr Eunice Konadu Asamoah (University of Ghana) discuss a decade of work building a global ocean science community through summer schools. The Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School in Nigeria and Ghana (COESSING) has run for one week every year since 2015 and, from 2025 to 2028, is embedded within the Ocean Margins Initiative, a research project of roughly USD 9 million supported by Schmidt Sciences that enables large-scale ocean science in the Gulf of Guinea. Connections made through COESSING helped instigate the initiative.
Over ten years COESSING has drawn about 1,000 in-person participants and 250 instructors, with hands-on research tracks in marine plastics, physical oceanography, biogeochemistry, fisheries management, and the Ocean Margins Initiative. The inaugural Coastal Ocean School in the Western Indian Ocean (COES-WIO) was held at the Technical University of Mombasa, Kenya, in September 2025 with about 75 participants and 20 instructors, and ran again in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in September 2026. The speakers will also touch on discussions about creating similar schools elsewhere.
What to expect
- Ten years of COESSING in Ghana and Nigeria, and its role in launching the Ocean Margins Initiative
- The COES-WIO schools in Kenya and Tanzania
- How research-track teaching has developed across the schools
- Plans for summer schools in other regions
- Aimed at scientists, researchers, early-career ocean professionals, and academics, in English
Location
Online.
Organiser
NANO (NF-POGO Alumni Network for the Ocean).
Registration