About Waber Conference
The West Africa Built Environment Research (WABER) Conference was started in November 2008 through an initiative of the School of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading, UK.
The University of Reading School of Construction Management and Engineering provided the seed funding for the first event which took place at the British Council in Accra, Ghana on 2-3 June 2009. Afterwards, the WABER Conference became an independent organisation and was subsequently registered in Ghana in 2011 as a company limited by guarantee. Our registered name is “West Africa Built Environment Research Conference”. WABER is the acronym for the first five words in our name and that is why we are known simply as WABER Conference. The WABER Conference committee provides the infrastructure and academic leadership for developing our activities and impact an organisation.
The original objective of the WABER conference was to provide a vehicle for the development of built environment research in West Africa through giving young researchers and early-career scholars an outlet for developing their research work and skills through constructive face-to-face interaction with experienced international academics and their peers; provide an outlet for people to discuss and disseminate their latest research work; and supply a platform for networking and collaboration among more senior academics. Today WABER has grown into a full-fledged conference hosting about 150 people at each conference and we have made significant impact in the West Africa region especially when it comes to helping early career researchers to develop their research work and skills; and also when it comes to facilitating knowledgeable interaction among built environment researchers.
When we started in 2008, we were the only conference of its kind in the built environment field in the region and it took much effort to bring the senior academics and doctoral researchers in the field together for the first event which took place in Accra in 2009. That first event made a major impact on the development of the built environment field in the West Africa region and formed a solid foundation for many positive developments including research quality. One of the developments we feel proud of is that through the WABER Conference, many built environment academics in the region got to meet each other and that opened the door for several possibilities including collaborative work, other conferences which others now organise, and new contacts for peer review and external examination activities.
We currently have researchers from more than 50 institutions on the African continent who participate actively in our WABER Conferences. Most of these institutions are universities and polytechnics in Nigeria and Ghana but our conferences consistently attract participants from other countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and the US. Our network of institutions and people has enabled us to pursue a number of initiatives including the development of a textbook on “Construction in West Africa” launched at the WABER 2012 conference in Abuja, Nigeria. Our WABER conferences have also enabled us to publish more than 700 research papers that are supplying some of the knowledge required to improve the construction sector and national economies on the African continent. In 2011, we visited and organised research seminars for lecturers and students in six polytechnic across Ghana and donated key textbooks to their libraries as a means of supporting learning and research in the built environment field. We also visited six leading universities in Nigeria in 2011 to interact with staff and students in built environment departments. More needs to be done in the coming years to further develop the built environment field and construction industry in Africa.
In 2013, we expanded our portfolio of activities which enabled us to make greater impact within the construction industry and contribute to the development of the wider higher education industry beyond just the built environment field. We started organising academic practice development workshops for lecturers in higher education institutions; and professional development workshops for practitioners in the built environment field and other professionals involved in the infrastructure projects. These workshops are organised through WABER Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Services.
Our values as an organisation are knowledge, interaction, people and leadership.
EVENTS ORGANISED BY WABER CONFERENCE SINCE 2009.
We have successfully organised more than 30 events since 2009 comprising of Academic research conferences, Academic practice development workshops for lecturers in higher education institutions, Continuing professional education workshops for built environment professionals, and Workshop for graduate research students. Through our events and the highly regarded resource persons we bring, almost 2000 people have been impacted and enabled to develop their knowledge and skills in their areas of work and interest. Below is a list of human development events we have organised and presented since 2009.
