AM3C Advisory Board endorses the International Biochar Conference

The Advisory Board of the Amina Mohammed Centre for Climate Change met on Thursday 3 September 2026 at the Federal Project Management Unit of the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes programme in Wuye, Abuja. The meeting was chaired by Umar Abdulhamid, National Project Coordinator of ACReSAL.

This was the second meeting of the Advisory Board, following the inaugural sitting held immediately after the inauguration of the Centre on 30 June 2025.

The Board’s main business was the Keffi 2026 International Biochar Conference. The conference will be the fifth National Biochar Conference since 2015, after Bowen, Ibadan and Abeokuta, and the first held outside the South-West since 2018. The Centre co-hosts with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa. On FARA’s advice continental research bodies including CORAF and CCARDESA were invited and have confirmed they will join online, so the conference will run as a hybrid event with papers offered by participants outside the country. The Board endorsed the hosting of the conference and the concept as presented, and asked the Centre to strengthen its virtual and exhibition components and to build a categorized database of biochar practitioners as the basis of a lasting community of practice.

The Director then reported on the Centre’s first teaching cohort. Forty-nine postgraduate students are admitted, twenty-six at doctoral and twenty-three at master’s level, and classes are running. Every student at both levels has an academic supervisor and an industry supervisor, so that a student working on land restoration in Bauchi under ACReSAL, for example, can carry that work into a thesis and the Centre can measure its impact rather than confining students to a classroom. Students also take internationally certified modules, including UNITAR modules that carry credit. Candidates on the waiting list will be admitted in the second semester. Members rose in commendation of the Director and the secretariat.

The Board agreed that a joint meeting of the Board of Trustees, the Advisory Board and the Academic Board be convened in the last quarter of 2026.