The focus of CARISCA is Africa, says Dr Ibraheem Forson Abdul-Azeez, as 5th Supply Chain Summit ends
By Cyriacus Nnaji:
Dr Ibraheem Forson Abdul-Azeez, Head of Department, Logistics and Supply Chain Management in the School of Transport and Logistics and also the Chairman, Local Organising Committee, CARISCA 2025 Supply Chain Conference has stated that the Focus of CARISCA is Africa.
Abdul-Azeez made the disclosure at the third and last day of CARISCA Supply Chain Summit which took place at the Marriott Hotel Ikeja GRA, Lagos, Nigeria between July 16 and 18, 2025.
Disclosing the meaning of CARISCA, he said the acronym means Centre for Applied Research and Innovation in Supply Chain in Africa which is based in Kwame Nkruma University of Science and Technology, Ghana, and it is being funded by the Arizona State University, KNUST and recently Kuhne Foundation for this CARISCA.
Summarizing events at the 2025 three day summit, Abdul-Azeez said that the presentations during the conference focused on general supply chains, sectoral supply chains, and emerging issues in supply chains. He said, “The day one we had panel session, plenary session, and then we had parallel session that cut across these three areas I mentioned. For instance the first day we had the Commissioner for Health, Ekiti State, Dr Oyebanji Filani and heads of DMAs (Drug Management Agencies) in Nigeria. So we are trying to look at how procurement of drugs is being done in states through their drug management agencies. There is also focus on pool procurement, pool procurement means all these drug management agencies from different states, they are pooling their resources together, to procure drugs, from the manufacturers directly, that was the focus and then we had different presentations across the parallel session.
“The summit is more of academic and professional though it tilted towards academic; we have journal presentations, from some of our partners, even from outside Nigeria. Then the second day, the same thing. Then the last day we also had a panel session and women participation in supply chain,” he stated.
Speaking on the intended beneficiaries of the summit, Abdulrazeez stated that the beneficiaries cut across Institutional, corporate and individual beneficiaries. “Let me take it from individuals, as researchers we learnt a lot about the supply chain, in the sense that we learn new methods from people from Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, so it is like cross breeding or exchange of ideas. We network and form a kind of alliances to carry out research that will be beneficial to us in Africa. In general the focus of CARISCA is Africa.
“Then for the corporate beneficiaries the output of research is meant for the organisation to implement, so we want those of them from the Industry to also benefit from the output we have presented. Then we are looking at institutional beneficiaries, like ARC-ESN Institute, Clinton HEALTH Initiative, that also want to partner, they want to know what is going on in health Supply Chain and then generally, as I said Africa is the ultimate beneficiary of whatever we are doing, whether, through institutions, corporate organisations, or whether research from individuals,” he said.
