About Us
TreccAfrica (Transdisciplinary Training for Resource Efficiency and Climate Change Adaptation in Africa) will provide doctoral and master’s training to 80 postgraduate students in Africa at six leading African Universities to provide the next generation of academics and professionals who will be able to address an interlocking set of real challenges for Africa’s future development: climate change and resource depletion.
Africa’s position in this complex requires unique, transdisciplinary skills and competencies. It is a continent dominated by poverty, contributes relatively little to total greenhouse gasses and in recent years has become the focus of a new global scramble for primary resources as new players like China have entered the game.
It is generally accepted that Africa might well experience the most severe impacts of climate change and is the continent that is least prepared to handle these impacts. To be truly sustainable Africa will need to ensure that it uses its rich resource endowment responsibly to fund investments in human capacity and knowledge infrastructure that will sustain development after the primary resources have been depleted. This, in turn, will establish for Africa the kind of funding base needed to finance adaptations to climate change.
The skills and competencies in transdisciplinary research methodologies that TRECCAfrica students will acquire and the research network that they will comprise will be able to generate policy-relevant research that tracks resource flows, prices, the use of these resources and flows of resource rents. Such a network will incorporate the various research environments from the six partners involved into a sustainable partnership for climate change and resource efficiency, as co-supervision and staff mobility form part of the project.
Project Funding
The European Union’s Intra-ACP academic mobility scheme promotes cooperation between higher education institutions (HEIs) and supports mobility in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) regions.
The programme is implemented and managed by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Union.
The intra-ACP academic mobility scheme provides support to:
- higher education institutions to set up inter-institutional cooperation partnerships between universities from different countries within the ACP regions;
- individual students, researchers and university staff to spend a study / research / teaching period in one of the countries within the ACP regions.The Intra-ACP programme builds on the African Union’s Mwalimu Nyerere programme for Africa, granting additional funding, and setting up a similar scheme for the Caribbean and Pacific regions and is funded through the European Development Fund (EDF).