There's a word Dr Edna Adan used in her interview on the Wales, Africa and the World podcast that stuck with me: cross-pollination. It's exactly what her partnership with Cardiff University is built on.

A relationship built on exchange

Dr Edna is an honorary fellow of Cardiff University's School of Healthcare Sciences and Nursing. She visits to lecture, most recently earlier this year, and students travel the other way too: her hospital in Hargeisa currently hosts students from Harvard, King's College London and the University of Virginia, on rotation. One of her own former students, trained in Bristol, is now dean of her school of nursing, proof that the exchange works in both directions.

In her own words: "This cross-pollination is very useful and I would welcome it very much."

Cardiff's own Somaliland community

Cardiff is home to a long-established Somaliland community, third and fourth generation Somalis, not recent arrivals. Dr Edna's visits connect directly with them, not only with the university. It is one of the reasons a Welsh podcast, hosted from Cardiff, is the right place to be telling this story.

What VeinTrain can learn from it

We are building the same principle into our own work in Somaliland (Horn of Africa): bringing outside expertise in, and letting it flow both ways over time, rather than delivering training from the UK and leaving. A colleague from a Russell Group medical school has already shown interest, and I hope more will follow. It's such a rewarding way to work, and the Somalilanders are a pleasure to teach. That is cross-pollination in practice, not just a phrase.

This is one part of a wider series on the VeinTrain Knowledge Hub, Listening to Leadership, Transformation, Learners, Communities and Partners. Read the fuller reflection in New Bridges: Leadership That Changes Nations: Dr Edna Adan's Message to the World.

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