The RARSUS project was officially launched at a special ‘kickoff’ event, held in Cologne, Germany from 26th to 31st March 2017.
The main goal of the RARSUS project – Risk Assessment and Reduction Strategies for Sustainable Urban Resource Supply in Sub-Saharan Africa – is to establish a long-term research based higher education cooperation between Germany and Africa within the sustainable supply management in urban and semi-urban regions in Africa.
Prof. Dr. Jakob Rhyner, Director of United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) responsible of the project at UNU-EHS and Dr. Erick Tambo, Associate Academic Officer for UNU-EHS, coordinating UNU’s contribution, attended the kick off workshop as opening event of the project hosted by the Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics (ITT) at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne leading the project consortium.
Further participants included the Directors of the Pan African University Institute of Water and Energy Sciences (PAUWES) and the Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey as well as the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn. The Project Management
Agency at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) which supervises the research component of the project and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) that supervises the post graduate education and training component of the project, were also present at the meeting.
The RARSUS project is part of a series of follow-up projects that the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will fund during the next years and which are all based on the successful partnership between PAUWES, UNU-EHS, ZEF and ITT.
Within the project, UNU-EHS is leading activities resp. work packages related to capacity building and eLearning. Specifically, UNU-EHS will translate scientific results of the research component of the project into educational materials like eCourses and will setup a digital learning environment where learning and collaboration will take place. An online summer school and online training activities will be organized on project related topics.