SES helps Ethiopian cities to solve problems related to housing poor urban communities by supporting these communities rather than evicting them from their informal settlements. It aims at improving poor residents’ security in housing and their access to energy needs ranging from sustainable energy systems through to the management of energy efficiency. Consequently this project has an impact on reducing the number of refugees coming to Europe.The project introduces a holistic approach in Ethiopian HEI’s existing academic programs for future urban developers and energy managers as well as educating key personnel in local authorities.SES will develop new courses for architects, planners and engineers based on specific case studies undertaken in 3 target regions. Courses will be offered at undergraduate and master level, but also external training as stakeholder training and dissemination workshops. Experiences gained in these courses will be integrated into the curricula of the partner HEIs, which will be approved by their senates and accreditation will be sought. Students will acquire up-to-date knowledge in the socially highly relevant field of informal settlements and their energy management as well as the sustainable management of such projects. Thereby, students will improve their employability. HEIs will sharpen their education and research profile in this field and strengthen their ties with engaged stakeholders (local and regional authorities, national housing authorities, local NGOs, local communities). Municipalities, local and regional authorities and NGOs will benefit from hiring well trained graduates who help them to solve problems related to informal settlements and their energy management. Affected poor urban residents of informal settlements will benefit from pilot interventions and improve their quality of life.

mHealth4Afrika is a collaborative research project that addresses maternal and newborn healthcare delivery, a key requirement of end-user communities in developing countries, and priority area in both the 2015 Millennium Development Goals and Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Aligned with Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges, mHealth4Afrika will research and evaluate the potential impact of co-designing an open source, multilingual mHealth platform on the quality of community based maternal and newborn healthcare delivery in Southern Africa (Malawi, South Africa), East Africa (Kenya) and Horn of Africa (Ethiopia). Research and innovation actors from three European and four African countries will engage with local end-user communities (i.e. representatives of parents and local community leaders, Ministry of Health, healthcare professionals and volunteers, health oriented NGOs). Based on this User-centred Design, Living Labs, Collaborative Open Innovation based approach, the consortium will integrate and adapt · Multilingual electronic health records to store patient history, associated tests and test results; · Sensors to capture the results of a range of standardised tests for expectant and lactating mothers, unborn babies and infants; · Analytical and visualisation tools to facilitate the interpretation and monitoring of the patient results; and · Multi-lingual and multimodal mobile interfaces leveraging visualisation and speech synthesis to address literacy deficits and digitise data gathering through electronic forms. By focusing on accessibility, usability and integrated training, this will facilitate urban, rural and deep rural healthcare workers to adopt and use a comprehensive system that integrates quality community based healthcare delivery with telemedicine. The expected outcome is a multi-region proof of concept that can make a significant contribution in accelerating exploitation of mHealth across Africa.

Our objective is to inform e-health policymaking towards better health outcomes through a bottom-up evidence-based holistic approach. BETTEReHEALTH will set up four Regional Hubs based in Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia and Malawi, already endorsed by each country's Ministry of Health. Each hub will organise coordination and networking activities (including two regional workshops) involving national and regional actors. We are planning actions to address three aspects related to successful e-health: human, technical and public policy factors. We will also organise two international workshops to promote the cooperation and networking between Europe and Africa. BETTEReHEALTH will create open access registries by collecting information from African countries regarding e-health policies and existing e-health solutions. The registries will be used to identify best-practices and produce useful knowledge regarding e-health implementation. The knowledge produced in registries, together with the input from the other activities will be synthesized into e-health policy roadmaps and strategic implementation plans for better e-health services for the four countries hosting Regional Hubs, but will also be of high relevance for other African countries. The strengths of BETTEReHEALTH are the diversity of the involved partners, which will contribute to an interdisciplinary approach (including health, technical and policymaking actors), the evidence-based approach guaranteed by the academic and research partners, and the strong local involvement ensured by the four Regional Hubs. BETTEReHEALTH will increase the level of international cooperation in e-health, inform and strengthen end-user communities and policy makers in making the right decisions for the successful implementation of e-health, and lead to increased opportunities for stakeholders in Africa and Europe with the overall aim of better health outcomes through better healthcare accessibility and higher quality.