Supply Chain: CARISCA gathers academics, practitioners, policymakers, for exchange of innovative ideas

By Cyriacus Nnaji:

Centre for Applied Research Innovation and Supply Chain in Africa (CARISCA) has gathered academics, practitioners, policymakers, and other critical stakeholders for exchange of innovative ideas.

This was the revelation at the fifth CARISCA Supply Chain Summit which was held at the Marriott Hotel, Ikeja GRA, Lagos, Nigeria, on July 16, 2025. The participants agreed that supply chain is a vital ingredient of everyday living for individuals and organisations.

Professor Adegoke Oke, from Arizona State University, the chair of the Department of Supply Chain Management of the university and one of the leaders of CARISCA as well as one of the founders of CARISCA, said, “This forum brings the best research, engage with government, the corporate players, it is like a symbiotic relationship. When we do research on supply chain, government benefits, private sector benefits, but how do we do the research? We look at the problem the government is facing, we also look at the problem the corporate partners are facing, so it is like a cycle, we collect the problems and then we solve them. So o this conference provides the platform for exchange of innovative ideas.”

Prof Oke disclosed that the summit being hosted in Nigeria was the 5th CARISCA summit and the very first time it was being held outside Accra, Ghana. He passed the verdict that it was a great occasion for the organisers.

According to Dr. Oyebanji Filani, Hon. Commissioner for Health and Human Services in Ekiti State and also the Chairperson of the Nigerian Health Commissioners Forum, who spoke on the Excellent work the states have been doing over the last four years, said the states are doing well by setting up drug management agencies, ensuring that those agencies are backed by law, and they are able to procure directly from manufacturers to guarantee quality of commodities, the availability of the commodities, and ensuring that the prices of the commodities are much lower than what people buy them from the open market all for the good of all the citizens in the different states.”

Speaking further he said, “Arising from that I talked about what we need to do going forward as a country and the subnational and the first thing I talked about is expanding our capacity as a country to manufacture locally, we have what it takes and I think even though the journey may be bumpy, we are in the right direction.

“The second one is leveraging on public procurement partnerships and working very closely with private sector that has execution speed, capacity and are able to drive public sector growth. It is also good we work with data and digital systems to ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability, ” he stated.

Professor Nathaniel Boso, a director of the CARISCA Centre, disclosing what CARISCA stands for said that it means Centre for Applied Research Innovation and Supply Chain in Africa. Further he added “So what we do is threefold, we do research on supply chain in Africa, we also do stakeholder engagement, engaging with policy makers, business leaders involved in supply chain. The third part is education, we are involved in providing high education in the area of supply chain and logistics. This means we partner with varieties of universities across Africa, where they provide scholarship opportunities for the less privileged, brilliant students who want to make career in supply chain.”

He said that CARISCA started five years ago in Ghana as a partnership between Kwame Nkruma University of Science and Technology and Arizona State University, and that funding came from the defunct USAID, ” They provided funds for different kinds of research, stakeholder engagement and scholarship for students from across the continent.”