The Pan-African Initiative for Research (PAIR) continues to advance collaborative projects that connect scholars, students, artists, and institutions across regions and disciplines. Grounded in PAIR’s mission to pair places, perspectives, and people, our most recent initiatives reflect reciprocal partnership, meaningful knowledge exchange, and integrated approaches to research, creative practice, and experiential learning.
Projects & Collaborations
Explore the PAIR projects and collaborations to learn more about our current, past, and emerging work advancing Pan-African scholarship, community-rooted research, and global collaboration.
Speculative Futures Visiting Writer Series
Speculative Futures Visiting Writer Series inaugural guest, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, an award-winning Afrosurrealist/Afrofuturist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya.
The PAIR Speculative Futures Visiting Writer Series brings leading voices in Afrofuturism, speculative fiction, and related genres to Waterloo to engage with students, faculty, and community members around diasporic futures and resistance narratives.
The inaugural visiting writer, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, is an award-winning Afrosurreal/futurist storyteller from Nairobi. Through classroom visits, interdisciplinary conversations, reading groups, and a public event, Kagunda’s visit positioned speculative fiction as both creative practice and critical methodology.
By connecting literary arts with research and public dialogue, the series deepens PAIR’s commitment to pairing creative and scholarly communities across continents, strengthening transnational exchange and expanding how knowledge is imagined and shared.
IDEAs Clinic in Ghana
Silas Ifeanyi, with the Pearl Sullivan Engineering IDEAs Clinic demonstrates how a quantum key distribution kit works. Photo credit: https://knust.edu.gh.
Led by the IDEAs Clinic within the University of Waterloo Faculty of Engineering, recent initiatives in Ghana advanced experiential engineering education while strengthening transnational partnerships. With support from the PAIR, these projects connected institutions in Ghana and Canada through applied innovation and knowledge exchange.
Quality of Life Hackathon | University of Ghana, Accra
Hosted at the University of Ghana in partnership with UN-Habitat, the hackathon brought together students and collaborators to design technology-enabled solutions addressing urban and community challenges. Grounded in local contexts and informed by global quality-of-life frameworks, the event paired applied engineering with real-world problem-solving.
Quantum Technology Workshop | KNUST, Kumasi
At the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), a hands-on Quantum Technology Workshop introduced students to foundational concepts in quantum communication. Developed with the Institute for Quantum Computing, the workshop expanded access to emerging technologies while strengthening research and educational ties between Ghana and Canada.