Scholarship holders of the “Water Engineering” programme supported by the Wilo-Foundation soon to finish their studies.

Since 2018, the Wilo-Foundation has been providing scholarships annually to students of the “Water Engineering” Master degree course at TU Berlin Campus El Gouna in Egypt, a satellite campus of Technische Universität Berlin. Students of the “Water Engineering” programme learn to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for tackling the various challenges in the water sector, especially in arid and semi-arid climate zones. The scholarships are provided to students from Africa writing a master theses that provide input and generate knowledge on water management in Egypt or Africa.

Over the past three weeks, the three current scholarship holders (who are about to finish their theses) individually presented their preliminary findings in digital meetings to experts from the Wilo Group and the Wilo-Foundation.

Those were the presenters and their topics:

Ms Rageemah Samie (South Africa)

Groundwater Recharge in Different Geological Units in Southern Africa Under Climate Change Conditions – Options for Artificial Recharge

Mr David Chelanga (Kenya)

Integration of Floating Wetland and Floating Photovoltaic System in enhancement of Wastewater treatment in East Africa, Case Study Nakivubo Channel Uganda

Mr Yosief T. Weldesilasie (Eritrea)

Assessment of Bias-Adjusted Satellite Rainfall Data for Rainfall-Runoff Modelling in the Metropolitan City of Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire)

The sessions were joined by Matthias Pantze (Group Director Market Segment Water) from the Wilo Group in Germany, and also by international Wilo colleagues who listened to some of the presentations and talked with students about their findings, including Gavin Bruggen (Managing Director South Africa), Belete Matebe (Managing Director Kenya) and Serkan Ogut (Business Development Manager Clean Water Utility in Turkey) and Munyao Francis (Application Manager in Kenya).

The financial support of the Wilo-Foundation gives the students an opportunity to write their master thesis in Germany at TU Berlin and engage in a close exchange with their professors. In this way, they can gain intercultural experiences and also get to know the German capital. The programme and the activities of TU Berlin in El Gouna will end this year.