its4land delivers an innovative suite of land tenure recording tools that responds to sub Saharan Africa’s immense challenge to rapidly and cheaply map millions of unrecognized land rights in the region. ICT innovation will play a key role. Existing approaches have failed: disputes abound, investment is impeded, and the community’s poorest lose out. its4land reinforces strategic collaboration between the EU and East Africa via a scalable and transferrable ICT solution. Established local, national, and international partnerships drive the project results beyond R&D into the commercial realm. its4land combines an innovation process with emerging geospatial technologies, including smart sketchmaps, UAVs, automated feature extraction, and geocloud services, to deliver land recording services that are end-user responsive, market driven, and fit-for-purpose. The transdisciplinary work also develops supportive models for governance, capacity development, and business capitalization. Gender sensitive analysis and design is also incorporated. Set in the East African development hotbeds of Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, its4land falls within TRL 5-7: 3 major phases host 8 work packages that enable contextualization, design, and eventual land sector transformation. In line with Living Labs thinking, localized pilots and demonstrations are embedded in the design process. The experienced consortium is multi-sectorial, multi-national, and multidisciplinary. It includes SMEs and researchers from 3 EU countries and 3 East African countries: the necessary complementary skills and expertise is delivered. Responses to the range of barriers are prepared: strong networks across East Africa are key in mitigation. The tailored project management plan ensures clear milestones and deliverables, and supports result dissemination and exploitation: specific work packages and roles focus on the latter.

The Covid-19 pandemic has come, in 2020 and 2021, to confirm even more the importance of the digitalisation of administrations, companies, and of course higher education institutions. African countries are committed to the digital movement, nevertheless, they are doing so at a slower pace. This is certainly linked to economic, cultural, and political factors, but also to a lack of knowledge and capacity of HEIs to renew their teaching practices through the prism of digital technology. In this project, we dig deep into this problem of digital divide and propose à contribution to its reduction. We base our ideas and orientations on previous studies that have clearly delineated the critical need but also the challenges faced by African HEIs to adapt to current and future labour market demands and student expectations. We thus propose a strategic framework to accompany digitalisation. This framework is culturally as well as functionally adaptable to avoid a one-size-fits-all solution. The transfer of good practice from Europe to Africa is important to serve this objective, for this we propose the creation of digital centres baring the mission of growing all stakeholders involved in the mission of higher education in digital and soft skills. We liaise with other societal stakeholders for knowledge transfer by establishing communities of practice and digital divers. Our dissemination approach aims to influence towards sectoral change in Africa and a better tackling of widening participation in Europe.

Changemaker objective: To implement & evaluate a sustainable health intervention program on health, nutrition, & environmental outcomes for the primary prevention of adolescent obesity & related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) together with adolescents in three rapidly urbanizing cities in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Tanzania. Background: There is an increasing epidemic of adolescent obesity that can contribute to adult obesity, morbidity & NCDs in a broader sense. Sustainable health interventions in urban low- and middle-income countries are critical in addressing lifestyle factors that contribute to obesity, diabetes & hypertension in later life, such as unhealthy dietary habits, inactivity & sedentary behaviors while shaping urban environments. Considering obesity is a complex issue that is influenced by wide range of interconnected factors, such as policy, environment, social, economic, cultural, behavioral, commercial, & biological determinants, a whole-systems approach that converges multiple sectors (i.e., health, education, environment, and agriculture) and stakeholders (i.e., adolescents, caregivers, staff, local government, communities, policymakers & implementers) are needed for obesity prevention in LMICs. Our strategy: Four evidence-based strategies, which will be adapted to context through a co-design process: 1) urban farming in schools with satellite farms and organic waste composting, 2) sustainable health modules for classrooms, 3) linking to healthcare workers through health talks using motivational interviewing techniques and 4) WHO Best Buys: Mass media campaign. Our evaluation: 3 cluster-RCTs in secondary schools, within the framework of urban Health & Demographic Surveillance Systems, implementation, process evaluation & cost-effective evaluation. Our expected results: Evidence of how to implement and scale a sustainable health intervention. Estimate a mean difference in BMI of 0.175 which could lead to reduction of 5% in the prevalence of obesity.