June 6, 2016 marks the start of a week-long training workshop for analytical chemists in Africa, supported by GlaxoSmithKline and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The workshop is taking place at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) from today June 6 to 10 2016.

The training scheme was begun in 2004, in Kenya,by Professor Anthony Gachanja and Dr Steve Lancaster –from Kenya and the UK respectively. The programme teaches practical skills in Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), a widely-used analytical technique, which is crucial in everything from environmental monitoring to drug development.

Now, with the help of a new five-year partnership between GSK and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Pan Africa Chemistry Network (PACN), the programme is being rolled out to Ghana, Nigeria and Ethiopia and will train more than 400 scientists, with participants attending from countries across the continent.

The programme aims to train local chemists to train others – leaving a self-sustaining programme and lasting legacy in African science.

Hannah Spry, from the Royal Society of Chemistry, has managed the partnership with GSK and attended previous workshops in Kenya, and is now involved in rolling out the training across Africa: “I’m proud to be working with GSK on this programme.

Their expertise in this critical area of analytical chemistry enables African scientists to get hands-on understanding of the industrial application of GC-MS, providing them with examples and case studies to bring this technique to life.

“The participants from the course I attended in Kenya were incredibly inspiring and engaging to work with and really demonstrated how impactful this training can be across Africa – enabling local scientists to respond to the many challenges that they face.”

Professor Kwasi Obiri Danso, Provost of the College of Science, and incoming ViceChancellor of KNUST, says:“We wish to thank the PACN, the Royal Society of Chemistry and GSK for choosing our college as a venue for the training programme. We also thank these bodies for providing the Department of Chemistry with a solar inverter worth over GHC 42000, to be used as back-up for the electricity supply for the GC-MS and other equipment.

“We hope that this training programme will foster a continued collaboration between our university, the PACN, the Royal Society of Chemistry and GSK. We also hope that similar training programmes in the use of other equipment and analytical techniques will be developed in the future in order to build the capacity of our staff and students for effective research.”

As well as providing practical training and support, the programme provides valuable networking and collaboration opportunities. Judith Gregory, Principal Scientist in NPD Skin Health at GSK, who is also one of the trainers, says: “At the previous workshop it was great to see the participants building a network between them and realising that they all face similar challenges and experiences. I’ve kept in touch with some of them myself and we’ve been swapping ideas and answering questions. It’s