The project aims at creating an EU-Africa e-Infrastructure, UBORA, for open source co-design of new solutions to face the current and future healthcare challenges of both continents, by exploiting networking, knowledge on rapid prototyping of new ideas and sharing of safety criteria and performance data. The e-infrastructure will foster advances in education and the development of innovative solutions in Biomedical Engineering (BME), both of which are flywheels for European and African economies. It is conceived as a virtual platform for generating, exchanging, improving and implementing creative ideas in BME underpinned by a solid safety assessment framework. Besides the provision of resources with designs, blueprints and support on safety assessment and harmonisation, specific sections for needs identification, project management, repositories and fund raising are also foreseen. UBORA (“excellence” in Swahili) brings together European and African Universities and their associated technological hubs (supporting biomedical prototyping laboratories and incubators), national and international policymakers and committed and credible stakeholders propelled by a series of Summer Schools and Competitions. In a nutshell, UBORA couples the open design philosophy with Europe’s leadership in quality control and safety assurance, guaranteeing better health and new opportunities for growth and innovation.

Groundwater resources in the coastal zone of EA are at risk. Increased demand, linked to rapid population growth in the coastal margins, has led to unsustainable and ill-planned well drilling and abstraction. Sea water intrusion into formerly freshwater aquifers frequently occurs as recharge from rainfall is insufficient to support the rate at which water is extracted. Wells supplying domestic, industrial and agricultural needs have, in many areas, become too saline for use. Climate change is expected to exacerbate this problem. Rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean region are projected to cause inundation of saltwater along the coastal zone, which is dominated by highly-permeable rock, while altered precipitation patterns and temperature change will affect the amount of water replenishing the aquifer through infiltration and recharge. Local communities across the region are already reporting changing tidal and rainfall patterns. The multiplicity of hydrological and demographic driving factors makes this a very challenging issue for management. At present the state of coastal aquifers in the EA region is not well constrained and past practices which may have exacerbated the problem have not been clearly identified. This project will bring together teams from Kenya, Tanzania and the Comoros Islands to address this knowledge gap; collaborating and working towards achieving water security in their respective areas. An integrative approach, combining the expertise of hydrogeologists, hydrologists and social scientists, will target selected sites along the coastal zone in each country. Hydrogeologic observatories will be developed where focussed research will identify the current condition of the coastal aquifers and identify future threats based on projected demographic and climate change scenarios. Water supply and monitoring needs will be identified through consultations with end-users and local authorities and optimum strategies for addressing these sought. An initial step will be to survey and bring together all existing data on well installations, abstraction, groundwater gradients and the salinity of existing wells at each pilot site. Understanding where wells are located, how deep they are, how much water is abstracted, what the flow directions are and what the salinity is, provides an overview of the state of the aquifer. Local data on hydraulic properties, such as the permeability, porosity, and storativity of the aquifer will be investigated and synthesised. Targeted electrical geophysical surveys, which provide relevant spatial information on both the aquifer structure and the saltwater distribution, will be undertaken. Similarly data is needed on the hydrological drivers in the system; to understand how much of annual rainfall infiltrates to replenish groundwater reserves (compared to the amount abstracted for human use) and how this might be impacted by changes in rainfall intensity or frequency. Land use and land use change is also important; controlling the proportion of incident rainfall which reaches the soil and subsequently groundwater. Recharge modelling will be an important tool for investigating different scenarios for climate and land use change and evaluating groundwater vulnerability. The social and political aspects of water use and development will be incorporated to assess the compatibility between the evolution of the availability of coastal freshwater resources and those of society and water politics. Researchers will engage with local community and stakeholder groups in each area and work together towards understanding the issues most affecting the communities with regards accessibility to water supply. A two-way exchange of knowledge between researchers and community members is essential in working towards feasible solutions to existing problems and ensuring preparedness for the changes in demographics and environment in the future.

VEREAD wants to be the privileged tool to make young European and African people engage in a transnational virtual dialogue and interactive exchange of ideas about Religion, to fight any form of intolerance and promote intercultural understanding. The consortium is highly diverse with six partners based in Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda and South Africa) and four in EU countries (Italy, Poland and France). The project wants to achieve the following specific objectives: enhance critical thinking and stimulate cross-cultural virtual interaction about Religion among students from different cultural backgrounds and countries; promote equal learning opportunities for all and make higher education more accessible through virtual exchanges; disseminate knowledge about Religion, with an interdisciplinary and comparative study approach, to foster a culture of tolerance against any gender, ethnic and religious discrimination; provide students with methodological and digital skills that can support them in their studies and careers (with the target of 500 formally achieving the forseen learning outcomes); strengthen the capacity building of the partner institutions through ad-hoc virtual training for teaching staff in online pedagogy; finally, to multiply possibilities for collaboration among European and African universities and research centres. These objectives will be achieved through the implementation of an online capacity building programme (virtual training of at least 20 lecturers and 50 facilitators), an integrated virtual exchanges programme for students including interdisciplinary online lectures on specific topics, cross-cultural VE among international break-out groups and working projects, as well as short online interactive workshops and seminars for a broader public of young people. The goal is to involve at least 2500 international participants from 12 countries and to introduce the VE in the educational offer of at least 9 institutions.

Globally food chains experience substantial losses which for horticulture products can be as high as 70% of production. This represents 8 percent of global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and substantial loss of resources such as water and energy. Food losses and waste result from to many reasons, which include inadequate infrastructure and lack or unreliable energy supply, lack of skills and access to markets. A key contributor to food loss in developing countries and in particular Africa and India is the very limited availability of cold food chains for the preservation and temperature controlled distribution of fresh produce to markets. The Sol-Tech project aims to make a contribution to addressing the food waste challenge and key Sustainable Development Challenges and Goals, including halving food waste by 2030, providing access to energy for all and alleviation of poverty and malnutrition. This will be achieved by building on previous and current research to develop to commercialisation stage an innovative but affordable solar powered modular fresh food cold storage and first mile distribution system for application in areas with no or limited and unreliable access to the electricity grid. Sol-Tech will involve collaboration between academic and industry partners from the UK, Africa and India to ensure that the technology development and commercialisation is informed by developing country needs and local political, socioeconomic and market conditions. The innovation potential and impact of the technology are substantial. Major innovations include: i) significant, up to 40% reduction of the thermal load of food transport refrigeration insulated boxes; ii) the use of solar energy to power on-board refrigeration systems and hybrid electrical and thermal energy storage to eliminate fossil fuel demand for precooling, storage and distribution of fresh produce; iii) adaptable on-board microclimate control and communication system to minimise transpiration losses, increase shelf life and maximise product quality at point of delivery. The project will also investigate and develop appropriate business models and commercialisation strategies tailored to specific local markets to ensure successful product commercialisation and maximum impact.