Eckart’s Corner – Words from the Secretary General #2-2022

Dear members and friends of the Global Innovation Family,

In South Africa it is still wintertime, but we are looking forward to the arrival of spring and our Summit in Cape Town! You might have read it already in the last newsletter or seen it advertised on various social media channels, but I would like to announce it also here: The WAITRO Summit 2022 will take place on 14th and 15th November in Cape Town, followed by the 26th General Assembly (GA) on 16th November.

We have put together an exciting program, which will hopefully motivate many of you to attend, to meet, learn and network again in person for the first time in four years. Indeed, the last full meeting of WAITRO was in Malaysia in 2018, as the pandemic forced us to move the 2020 Summit and GA online.

The Summit 2022 will focus on SDG 17 “Partnerships for the Goals”. As WAITRO, we emphasize the necessity to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. We believe that WAITRO as the Global Innovation Family can contribute its share to reach the goals.

With a roundtable on SDG 17 and a panel discussion on the question of how to finance innovative partnerships for the SDGs we will delve deeper into the partnership topic. In addition, the Summit will offer several interesting Capacity Development Workshops on topics ranging from Commercialization to Benchmarking. To further improve the cooperation between WAITRO members, we will also kick-off four WAITRO Working Groups, each related to one SDG.

Finally, there will be plenty of time and space for networking. We already sent out a call to all members to contribute with posters on the impact of their research results on the SDGs. These posters will be part of an exhibition onsite at the Summit in the networking area. The awarding of the German-African Innovation Incentive Awards (GAIIA) will also happen during the Summit, there will of course be a Summit dinner and cultural performances – in fact you better check it out on the Summit website and register as soon as possible, since places are limited and early bird registration will close on 25th September!

Of course, the Summit will be immediately followed by the 26th WAITRO General Assembly on the morning of November 16th. By the Constitution, only full members in good standing can participate and vote in the GA.

When the membership fees were waived until the end of 2022 at the 25th GA, “good standing” was defined as providing the Secretariat with information on each member organization that is used to enhance networking. All contact persons should have received a template for this information and are asked to fill it out by September 9th. That input will also be used to promote our members with another set of posters (produced in a standard format by the Secretariat) that will be displayed during the Summit and beyond.

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the Summit in South Africa!

Eckart