Notes from ORSEA Conference

Notes from the 7^th ORSEA conference 2011 hosted at Kenya International Conference Centre-KICC (amphitheater) on 13^th -14^th October and facilitated by three Universities University of Nairobi Schools of Business, University of Dar es salaam Business School and Makerere University Business School. Themed the role of operation research in the national visions within the east African and national regional integration brought researcher, academicians, scholars, business personalities, both private and public industry players on the day that also doubled up the international day of disaster reduction.

Nzuve made a formal introduction of years’ theme “role of operation research in the national visions within the east African and national regional integration” and emphasized that it will be a benchmark for the forthcoming conference; It will develop guidelines and recommendation. Kenya has to be a research hub since vibrant economies relies on research and quality control.

Prof Enos Njeru marking his remarks said that university of Nairobi is on the frontline in promoting academic who includes research, promoting business through the exchange of ideas from various actors in line with vision 2030 and being part of solution oriented from the discussion.

President of ORSEA Prof Isaac Mbeche made an interesting observation drawing the East African Community on the Link between leadership challenges in our region is closely link to poor research thanked the minister for making time to be there.

Min. W Oparanya the minister of state, planning and vision 2030 closely made his remarks especially highlighting the challenges of research in Africa, the need to adopt techniques which are most appropriate, seeking optimal point, showing interest on the common currency protocol. He also shared out that Kenya is implementing vision 2030 developed through an intensive research and a long term strategy to change Kenya into a middle income nation. The Minister finally before launching the ORSEA Journal which will be a milestone as a medium to exchange, challenge and research findings are communicated back,  gave building blocks of the vision 2030  (political pillar, social pillar and the economic pillar).

Keynote speakers whom included Prof James J Cochran of INFORMS, Mike Gorman of University of Dayton made their remarks that gave room for 47 paper to be presented later to be consolidated to relevant authorities as a basis and ground for their decision making.

The 2 day event was an informative one to young stakeholder like me in the research industry as this was an eye opener to world of research and links of research which includes theory, teamwork, application and professional participation. The repulsive nature of organization, topic selection, resource constraints Paper presented on the current issues and tackling real world problems gave me a wider scope of dealing handling them and finally a chance to Networking with the industry player of research.