The Master’s project “Water Resources and Environmental Risks in African Cities”, also known as MAREMA aims to improve the quality of higher education to better address technical and scientific challenges for water resources management and environmental risks in large African cities. MAREMA project is based on existing degrees in the partner universities. They will be gradually rearranged to create a common degree between Benin, Cameroon and Ivory Coast. This new degree is built on the analysis of the labour market needs and aims to reach this specific positioning. Innovative pedagogical and scientific approaches are developed to ensure the quality of the Master’s degree. It especially encompasses new scientific tools, multi-disciplinary approach, problem-solving based learning, research training and development of MOOC. These tools are co-developed by the partner universities’ pedagogical teams with specific trainings taking place before implementing the innovative tools in the degree.MAREMA training program is deeply embedded in its socio-professional environment thanks to the large number of partners already involved in the project. The proposed strategy aims to guarantee the participation of future employers in the elaboration of the training template, its implementation (teachings, participation in field activities) and its evaluation that ensures its embedding. The MAREMA project strengthens the capacities of partner universities to collaborate and to align themselves with higher education European standards. It also guarantees a high level of student employment. The project strengthens the capacities of teaching staffs involved. It reinforces the partners’ ability to design and lead sustainable development (creation of centers of excellence in terms of expertise and research in this field).

The goal of the PEP project is to develop institutional and staff capacity for Professional English at 6 universities in Mali, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. In the short run (by the end of the project, 2025), this will strengthen the English language and scientific writing capacity of students and researchers at the francophone universities and the capacity of partners to offer Professional English Programs. In the medium to long run (2025-30), the modernization of their Professional English Programs will increase the universities’ ability to do more international research, education and collaboration.The specific objectives are:1. Develop strategies, frameworks and activities for Professional English Programs2. Strengthen the capacity of language teachers for Professional English teaching3. Increase the skills of students and researchers for scientific communication and writing in EnglishThe PEP project combines staff/teacher training and exchanges of good practices in language teaching with piloting new courses and strategic discussions of institutional implementation/upgrades of Professional English Programms. 4 target groups: 1. Professional English Programs: Upgrade/implement 6 Professional English language programs with a focus on oral communication and academic writing skills. 2. Language teachers: The project will train 12 language teachers in teaching innovative Professional English courses. 3. Master/PhD students: In the test phase of course pilot 1, our 12 African language teachers will deliver a new oral communication/presentation skills in English course to a total of 90 graduate students (6x15 participants)4. Researchers: In the test phase of the pilot course 2, our African language teachers will deliver an academic writing in English course to 90 researchers (post-doc and professor level, 6x15 participants)We will publish a handbook with recommendations, good practice examples and the course models developed by the PEP consortium.

The overall objective of Joint AQ Africa is to contribute to the harmonization of higher education in Africa by setting up comparable quality assurance systems, defined by the cooperation of national authorities and HEI. The project will engage three pilot countries (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire), in the development of a model for university institutional and programme level evaluation, based on a joint and complementary approach (national/regional/African continental) in order to inspire joint accreditation in French-speaking Africa, in particular. The methodology involves several stakeholders in this process and ultimately addresses the different gaps that exist in the various countries targeted, in terms of consolidating their QA and accreditation systems:a)Ministries and QA agencies and their capacities to agree on a common model for joint assessment;b)Universities and their abilities to assess their performance against these standards and to build their own internal QA processes;c)The main networks and associations for higher education and quality assurance in Africa, and their capacities to work collectively in the region and internationally, and to promote and apply similar approaches to other African countries and regions.The main outputs will be the development of a joint evaluation model, guidelines for its execution and six pilot evaluations. African partner universities will build capacity for self-assessment, through training for quality assurance staff. Training is also offered to the staff of ministries, and spaces are created whereby ministries and universities co-create approaches and build trust towards their respective QA systems. Through CAMES and important associated partners, awareness will be raised at the political level on the importance of the consolidation of a regional accreditation approach, which can serve systems which do not yet have QA agencies and can put forward mutual recognition of accreditation decisions.

The major objective of the AFREQEN project is to increase the adaptability of higher and professional education system in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia in the field of renewable energies and environment. The mean is to develop professional aspects in education, and to implement a quality process of continuous improvement within the institutions of training and applied research. AFREQEN will thus contribute to sustainable development and to growing up of renewable energies in North and West Africa. AFREQEN aims to establish:- Bases for the acquisition of skills in quality management and in metrological control, by designing, testing and diffusing initial (I) and professional (P) training modules, including e-learning ones, with up-to-date knowledge in renewable energies : biomass, solar, wind ... The module construction will address the requirements issued from a study of the needs of the social, economic, agronomic and industrial sectors in the African transaharian region.- Capacities in the academic institutions for the implementation of the quality approach : for students at engineers, Master and Doctorate levels; for adults at manager (awareness) and professional (training sessions) levels; for research and technology transfer among researchers, teachers and other ‘staff from the academic area', with specific credits.- The networking of higher education institutions and research institutes in the partnering countries with the EU member states, using a previous sustainable and evolutive cloud platform of expertise and experience sharing, enlarged to new environmental technologies and to new African countries.The consortium brings together major actors in the partnering countries and relevant international institutions related to development.

Africa will need to feed over 2 billion people by 2050 while coping with unprecedented demographic, socio-economic, environmental, climatic and health transitions. Meanwhile, undernourishment is still on the rise, affecting almost 20% of its population now. Under this light, ensuring Africa’s food security becomes imperative, with the bioeconomy posed to play a leading role to this end. It is against this backdrop that BIO4AFRICA sets off to support the deployment of the bioeconomy in rural Africa via the development of bio-based solutions and value chains with a circular approach to drive the cascading use of local resources and diversify the income of farmers. Our focus is on transferring simple, small-scale and robust bio-based technologies adapted to local biomass, needs and contexts (green biorefinery, pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonisation, briquetting, pelletising, bio-composites and bioplastics production). In doing so we aim at empowering farmers to sustainably produce a variety of higher value bio-based products and energy (animal feed, fertiliser, pollutant absorbents, construction materials, packaging, solid fuel for cooking and catalysts for biogas production), significantly improving the environmental, economic and social performance of their forage agri-food systems. To this end, we have set up 4 pilot cases with over 8 testing sites in Uganda, Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast, offering more than 300 farmers and farmer groups of all sizes (incl. small dairy and lower-income farmers, women farmer groups and transhumant pastoralists among others) the opportunity to test them in real productive conditions. Along the way, our balanced mix of 13 African and 12 EU partners will engage in solid multi-actor collaboration with rural communities and government, co-developing novel sustainable value chains driven by circular business models and supporting deployment in other areas, all while safeguarding agronomic, environmental, social and economic sustainability.