Africa's first green chemistry training school offers inspiration to students and early-career scientists

As well as offering an introduction to green chemistry, the initiative featured a host of sessions covering:

• Renewable feedstock and recycling
• Greening organic synthesis
• Greening inorganic synthesis
• Greening solvents and media
• Greening processes
• Life cycle, sustainability assessments and modelling.

The school aims to nurture best practices relating to chemical processes, which could improve environmental sustainability in the region and address the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

Prof Habibi, who previously worked in Europe and North America for more than two decades, said that while all of the attendees possessed a high level of chemistry knowledge, he admitted that green chemistry is still a nascent area of study in Africa.

Groups in Ethiopia and South Africa have explored the topic but there has historically been little continental collaboration in this field. The team at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University were keen to make the school inclusive to as many nationalities from across Africa as possible, rather than just keeping it as a Moroccan initiative.

"I would say this is a unique initiative here," Prof Habibi explained. "We want to create a great African sustainability movement that can run parallel to the school so we can actually work hand in hand with each other and unify our efforts to build a real curriculum in green chemistry, rather than just having small courses and research initiatives here and there."

He added: "We had 16 African countries present for the first edition and now, in those students who joined us, I have more than 50 ambassadors with me talking about the school. People are reaching out to us to see how they can help at the African level."

One of the key issues affecting the uptake of green chemistry in Africa is the lack of accessibility to key resources, including up-to-date journal articles.

The problem for African researchers was laid bare when Prof Habibi asked colleagues from outside the continent to send over materials ahead of their presentations.

"They sent me links to the papers, which is what I would have done if I was in Europe," he said. "We had to say to them 'Please, we need the papers themselves because the vast majority of them don't have access to journals, otherwise they will have to rely on illegal websites to download this'."

Prof Habibi believes that Open Access offers a chance to level the playing field in terms of resources. He would also be keen to partner with some journals to enable more students to explore the latest developments in the field.

The difficulties in accessing existing research meant that GreenChemAfrica students had to start right at the beginning when the training school got under way.

"Most of them, if not all, have no clue about green chemistry, so we started with them really from the definition from scratch," Prof Habibi said. "They are very good at organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, and so on but when it comes to a new thing, most of the syllabus and the curricula here in Africa are old-fashioned so exploring new trends can be quite challenging. Having greater access would be extremely helpful."

Planning is already under way for next year's event, which will take place in late April on the main UM6P campus. Prof Habibi expects a similar number of interested researchers to attend, with places once again at a premium. 

He is proud to see the first group of attendees already serving as 'ambassadors' for the programme and helping get the word to others in their networks and broaden awareness of the school in the future.

"People now know a bit about the school, about the concept, and we have had people reaching out to us to see how they can help," Prof Habibi said. "I will not say the second edition will be easy, but we have foundations in place for many things. Now, we are focusing on raising the bar a little bit and improving what we can."

Speaking of his pride at getting the school up and running, he added: "The dream became bigger and bigger and bigger as we planned it. UM6P really wants to be the innovation and education hub for Africa - not only for Morocco but for all of Africa - and that resonated in my head a lot. I said, 'well, I will make it an African school.'

"It was a huge challenge, I must confess, but nothing was too big or difficult for my team at Sus-Mat RC. This was just the start."

• Learn more about the GreenChemAfrica programme by visiting the school's website.