The new MoU was signed on the sidelines of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's state visit to South Africa on 28 February. The visit was aimed at strengthening political and economic relations between the two countries.

President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted President Museveni at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, and the two countries concluded a number of MoUs on various matters.

The partnership agreement signed between the UIRI and the CSIR, an entity of the Department of Science and Innovation, builds on the 2011 partnership agreement entered into following a study that found the Ugandan tropical climate and fertile land favourable for essential oil crops.

CSIR senior researcher Dr Thomas Ryan-Keogh and CSIR research group leader for the Southern Ocean Carbon-Climate Observatory Dr Sandy Thomalla are co-lead authors of this high-impact research, which suggests that there may be a reduction in the supply of iron to the Southern Ocean’s surface sunlit waters.

Outlining the significance of the research, Ryan-Keogh says that the Southern Ocean is a globally important region that helps to mitigate the impacts of climate change by absorbing, mainly through physical processes, a significant proportion of the man-made carbon dioxide that is emitted through the burning of fossil fuels. “Almost half of all the anthropogenic carbon dioxide that dissolves in the ocean does so here,” he says.