ASP2018 Forum Day

My name is Steve Muanza,
                                           I'm an experimental particle physicist with CNRS-IN2P3. I'm based at the Center for Particle Physics in Marseille, France. I'm a member of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN, where I participate to searches for Supersymmetry and the usage of Monte Carlo tools. I'm french, but my parents come from the DR Congo.
I am the initiator and one of the co-founders of the "African School of Physics" (ASP). For ASP2018, we organized several concurrent events: on top of the school for the graduate students, there was the first "African Conference of Physics", a workshop for the high school teachers and outreach to secondary school pupils.
During my 2 weeks stay, I mostly supervised the students program and I gave a lecture about "BSM searches at the LHC".
During the Forum Day, we discuss higher education and capacity building policies with the local authorities, but also with representatives of other african countries, especially the host country of the next edition of ASP. This year this was held on july 4th at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) and was directly followed by the school dinner at the University of Namibia (UNAM). Both events were attended by the students, the lecturers and the organizers. The ASP Local Organizing Committee (LOC) was represented by Dr E. Kasai (UNAM), Prof. R. Steenkamp (UNAM), Dr M. Backes (UNAM), Prof. D. SINGH (NUST), Prof. A. ZULU (NUST), among others. The ASP International Organizing Committee (IOC) was represented by Dr C. DARVE (ESS Lund), Prof. B. ACHARYA (King's College London & ICTP Trieste), Dr K. ASSAMAGAN (BNL USA) and myself. NUST and the local press had assigned some photographers to take pictures of the event, and G. TEKOUTE (Telecom Responisble with Eniyo Ingenierie, France) also took pictures and film of the event for the IOC. We had the honour to count distinguished guests in the audience, namely:
. Dr T. TJIVIKUA: Vice-Chancellor of NUST,
. Dr N. TITUS: Chairperson of the Board of Commissioners of the National Commission on Research Science and Technology,
. Honourable K. HANSE-HIMARWA representing the Minister of Education, Arts and Culture,
. Dr J. HYBASKOVA: Head of the European Union Delegation to Namibia.
The first half of the forum was quite formal: it started and ended with the African Union and the Namibian anthems. Dr A. PETERS, the Dean of the faculty of computing at NUST, served as a master of ceremony. A few addresses were delivered:
. a welcome by NUST vice-chancelor, Dr TJIVIKUA
. the IOC mentorship program was described by Mrs P. RAMOHLOUOANE,
. the ASP was presented by Dr K. ASSAMAGAN on behalf of the IOC,
. a vote of thanks was presented by Dr E. KASAI on behalf of the LOC,
. the ASP2018 students feedback was given by a student of NUST: Mr I. SAKARIA,
And talks concerning the namibian strategy for capacity building were presented by Dr TITUS and Mrs HANSE-HIMARWA. There was also a presentation of Morroco as the host for ASP2020 by Prof. M. CHABAB from Marrakech University.
During the second half the forum the talks were more focused on the specific actions and plans by several international physics institutions.  The South-Africa CERN program was described and the initiatives by ICTP (Italy), BNL (USA) were presented. Within this context I presented the CNRS-IN2P3 (France) initiatives. Two talks described in particular how the ambitious project of a "Square Kilometer Array", and more generally astronomy, can generate new knowledges on top of contributing to african capacity building strategies.
Finally, two additional addresses delivered at the school dinner: one quite insprirational by Dr HYBASKOVA (EU) and the closing one by Mr N. LUPAHLA (representing the Ministry of H. Education, Training and Innovation).
My personal impression was that lots of useful informations were exchanged, but no live discussions occured due to time restrictions.