Worth watching - A talk series where guests speak their minds

The event series "Just change the world", jointly organised by the alumni association and the University of Bremen to celebrate the university’s 50th anniversary, began with two compelling talks in the Radio Bremen event studio. Each event had a live audience of around 50 and many more online who were able to follow the livestream on the university's YouTube channel – for all in attendance, an experience with top-class, incisive guest speakers.

The future belongs to Africa (also the title of the talk on 29 November) – but only if we succeed in developing a truly new sense of togetherness between black and white, between the former colonisers and the colonised. This was the ardent appeal from Rozena Maart, a professor in Bremen's partner city Durban and a University of Bremen Research Ambassador, who pointed out that relations are still shaped by colonial thought patterns, as is evident in the handling of the global corona crisis.

At the University of Bremen there were significant early contributions to decolonisation, including international law professor Manfred Hinz’s Namibia project in the 1970s. Almost 120 years after the genocide committed by Germans against the Herero and Nama, Germany this year pledged financial compensation for Namibia amounting to one billion euros. An important step, said Hinz, but an official apology is still due.

We need more Africa competence in Germany, insisted Uschi Eid, former parliamentary state secretary in the German Federal Ministry for Development Cooperation (BMZ) and current president of the German Africa Foundation. [To develop this competence] the new government in Berlin must set up an Africa institute.

At the talk "Reaching for the stars" on 17 November, our guest speakers widened the perspective from the globe to the universe. We have to think today about whether our Earth will still be habitable in millions of years, said Hans Königsmann, a vice president at SpaceX in the USA for ten years and one of Elon Musk's closest collaborators. Space exploration currently serves climate protection particularly well, said Professor Avila, Director of ZARM (Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity) at the University of Bremen. With experiments in the drop tower, [ZARM is] preparing many research subjects that we can then examine more closely in space. And from space, stated Marco Fuchs, head of Bremen's largest aerospace firm OHB, we can see in a striking way how fragile the layer of atmosphere around our Earth is and that the consequences of climate change are actually already greater than we recognise.

Bremen is substantially involved in the plans for the first human expedition to Mars, which is anticipated to launch in about 20 years. Who on the panel would go to Mars, asked Radio Bremen presenter Katrin Krämer. Only Claudia Kessler – the only woman among the talk show guests who, as an engineer, is working on many fronts to send the first female German astronaut into space.

All talks will remain available on Uni Bremen's YouTube channel.