We are very grateful to Prof. Bridget A.M. Yakubu (Directorate of Advancement & Linkages [DAL]) for giving us a few minutes of her and her colleagues valuable time earlier today at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). Mike traveled to Abuja, Nigeria, for his daughter’s legal marriage ceremony (photos on his flickr site). While in Abuja, Mike wanted to seek links in-person with local scholars who might have affinity with hanfod.NL. Mike’s friend Mr Kaplama kindly reached out to an academic friend who suggested Prof Yakubu’s directorate and we drove out to the campus in good hopes. NOUN is massive by any standards. Although an open university, NOUN’s home campus covers a huge area, and we struggled to find the right office block, never mind office (although the location is clear enough from the NOUN website to be fair!). We were very kindly received even though, as I suspected, it was soon clear that Prof. Yakubu was used to dealing with requests for collaboration at a far higher level than mine. Although I led off by admitting I was no longer at Cardiff University, I needed to repeat this and emphasise that potential collaborations must start somewhere, perhaps through modest means and contacts rather than large scale project proposals. I had taken encouragement from DAL’s website which stated, “The Directorate of Advancement and Linkages (DAL) … functions include exploring opportunities for collaboration and strategic partnerships with local and international institutions, agencies, industries, and individuals in the areas of training, research, and the overall development and advancement of the University.” Given that individuals get a mention, we were in the right place afterall. Prof. Yakubu kindly agreed to a colleague taking a note of our email address and website in order to forward our details to potential education researchers at NOUN’s. Perhaps nothing will come of it, but I was delighted for the opportunity.

Background: I have long felt that, with a few notable exceptions and for some obvious reasons (e.g. NLC being largely based in Europe), has not featured scholars or even voices from the ‘Global South’ enough. Clearly there are dangers to navigate/avoid in terms of white saviourism or virtue signaling. We missed Prof Czerniewicz (link to her 2008 contribution) at May’s conference and so it was great to see Lone and colleagues from a project between Aalborg, Denmark and Gulu University in Uganda (link to their workshop in the Proceedings). My own prior efforts to promote connections with UNAM, which has a formal partnership with CU, came to nought and were extinguished when I left Cardiff Uni. No doubt much good work is done through conferences such as https://www.elearning-africa.com, however, NLC has a distinctive philosophy and research emphasis – deep and broad enough to embrace phenomenology!