When the Kenyan-German Centre of Excellence for Mining, Environmental Engineering and Resource Management (CEMEREM) was conceived a decade ago with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), this 8^th German-African Centre of Excellence, and so far the first and only one with an engineering orientation, carried a simple yet profound conviction: Africa deserves not just graduates, but practice-oriented engineers and resource managers.

A decade later, Taita Taveta University (TTU), the hosting African institution for CEMEREM, marked the decadal milestone at the 5th CEMEREM Biennial International Conference. Celebrated in the Tsavo East ecoregion, Taita Taveta, Kenya, from 28^th September to 1^st October 2025, with speakers, audiences, and young innovators from across the world, CEMEREM’s vision stood affirmed — mature, confident, collaborative, international, and unmistakably authentic. Fittingly, this celebration took place as DAAD marked a century of shaping minds and futures through postgraduate scholarships, global staff and student exchange, and research excellence. Under the theme “Natural Resource Management in Africa’s Primary Natural Resource Sector: Technology and Innovations for a Sustainable Future,” scholars, industry leaders, policymakers, students, and communities convened to rethink how Africa learns, mines, governs, and sustains. Delegates from 11 countries and 145 participants affirmed one truth: technological innovation remains the backbone of sustainable resource stewardship.

A Decade of Delivery

CEMEREM@10 celebrated a journey marked by:

• Over 150 postgraduate (MSc, MBA, PhD) scholarships and strengthened postgraduate programmes
• Partnerships with German institutions — HTW Dresden, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, and University of Zittau/Görlitz
• Establishment of innovation hubs and four patents
• University-industry synergy shaping employability pathways
• Youth-centred innovation, incubation, and entrepreneurship
• Empowerment programmes for artisanal and small-scale miners
• Applied research in agri-PV, water systems, biogas, and geospatial modelling for integrated mine planning and natural resource management

This has been an exemplar of scholarship meeting society; technology bridging mines and markets; and research touching real livelihoods.

Bridges to Shared Prosperity

CEMEREM Pre-Conference Training (28-29 September 2025) exemplified the future of African engineering and resource education, tackling the following timely topics and laying a strong foundation for institutionalising tailored training programmes with stackable micro-credentials: Smart geo-optimisation for mining and infrastructure development; Earth Observation technology and services for health, urban management, and emergency and disaster preparedness; financial intelligence; and interdisciplinary collaboration. Course participants received certificates of completion.

The Institution of Engineers of Kenya (IEK) awarded CPD credits to participants who successfully completed the short course on financial intelligence.

Lightning talks and poster sessions revealed a new emerging African scholar in the youth: creative, confident, computational, collaborative, and digitally fluent — mapping underground tunnels with SLAM LiDAR, differentiating methane sources with machine learning, converting waste to watts, and designing sustainable mining support systems for communities at the margins.

Beyond the Decade: A New Resolve for Revolutionary Outcomes

CEMEREM’s next decade will pursue mechanisms and resources for achieving:

• Digital fluency, embedded across disciplines
• Circular economy in mining, engineering, and enterprises
• Climate, Land, Energy and Water Systems (CLEWs) models
• Geospatial systems for intelligent and location-aware resource planning, management, and governance
• Locally-rooted, globally-aligned innovation culture
• Gender equity and youth inclusion as non-negotiable minimums

In the language of DIGI-FACE, we can now confidently state that CEMEREM is not fixated on the traditional “capacity building” paradigm. Rather, it is actively exploring the cutting-edge of “capability unlocking” for mindset re-engineering and sustainable resource stewardship in Africa.

Lessons and the Promise

From Tsavo to global laboratories, the DAAD-supported Africa’s Centres of Excellence are nurturing a generation fluent in both code and community, data and dignity, and engineering and empowerment. CEMEREM@10 has presented a truth the world must now recognise:

Buoyed by Germany’s science diplomacy — a prime model of empowering scholarship with dedicated internationalisation strategies, Africa is not just preparing for the future but building it. CEMEREM has now qualified as a case study in leveraging mining and natural resource management education in Africa, a continent whose huge mineral resource potential still remains largely unexploited. Thus, sustaining the CEMEREM vision is not just a good idea; it is the runway to the step changes Taita Taveta University is pursuing relentlessly to cement its position as the home of ideas and Africa’s centre of excellence for mining and natural resource education, research, and innovation.

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Dean, School of Mines & Engineering, Enactus Patron Nashon Adero Taita Taveta University More blogs from this author

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