CALL FOR A TECHNICAL PARTNER UNIVERSITY
Climate Research and Education to Advancing Green Development in Africa (CREATE-GreenAfrica)
Climate Research and Education to Advancing Green Development in Africa (CREATE-GreenAfrica) is a project funded by European Commission through European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Our team was successful and was among the 15 projects awarded the funds. The African universities involved in the project are:
- University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), the coordinating institution,
- Mekelle University (Ethiopia),
- University of the Free State (South Africa),
- University of Ghana (Ghana),
- University of Port-Harcourt (Nigeria) and
- Open University of Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe).
However, one of the conditions for this project to implement is to have a technical partner university from the European Union (EU) countries, due to that, we are inviting to any individual working in one of the universities located in the EU countries specializing in climate sciences related fields to join our team to support in the aforementioned project implementation. The duration of the project is 48 months. The project commenced retrospectively on the 1st of January 2024.
The main objective of the project is to support the Intra-Africa Academic Mobility Scheme. The project will offer PhD and MSc scholarships to African students’ to study outside their home country in other African countries' universities. The project covers the mobility indicated in the Table below:
|
Nr. Scholarship holders |
Contribution for scholarship |
Institutional Contribution |
Contribution for special needs |
GRAND TOTAL |
Doctor Degree Seeking Mobility |
6 |
265,680 |
194,400 |
|
|
Doctor Credit Seeking Mobility |
6 |
44,280 |
32,400 |
|
|
Master Degree Seeking Mobility |
22 |
469,920 |
475,200 |
|
|
Master Credit Seeking Mobility |
13 |
46,280 |
46,800 |
|
|
Traineeship Seeking Mobility |
10 |
36,900 |
27,000 |
|
|
Staff Seeking Mobility |
10 |
71,100 |
27,000 |
|
|
Total Number of Mobilities |
67 |
934,160 |
802,800 |
62,140 |
1,799,100 |
The mobility will be within African countries consortium members. The nature of the project is that the institution will spend scholarship funds if it hosts scholarship mobility in its university. The student’s mobility triggers institutional contribution. The formulation of the institutional contribution is (900 Euro times the number of mobility times months spent in the mobility).
Based on the nature of the project, the technical partner will be involved (i) in 4 meetings that include 3 student selection meetings and 1 project closing meeting to one of the members' universities in African countries and (ii) 3 technical partner staff mobility to the HEIs African Countries. These funds will come from the institutional contribution of the HEIs African Universities. The share of the proposed budget for the technical partner university is 70,000 Euro which will cover technical staff mobility and meeting participation. The consortium has already received half of the project funds; thus, the technical partner university will receive half of the funding in this phase and the other half will be received after the consortium receives the second phase.
The role of the technical partner is to provide advice particularly in the student selection, administrative, and financial management of the project and of the mobility scheme. The technical university can also participate in a staff mobility scholarship in one of the partners HEIs members of the consortium in order to foster the capacity building of partner universities.
The technical partner university involvement can be at the departmental level in which 2 to 5 personnel can be involved in the project, however, the legal officer of the technical partner university will be required to sign the Grant Agreement and Grant Declaration from the EU Funding & Tenders Portal from the European Commission portal. The technical partner university will be added to the European Commission portal and Project Office from the European Commission to initiate the process of signing the Grant Agreement and Grant Declaration. The signing is an electronic signature in which the technical partner university will be invited to join the team through the portal and once the technical partner university have an account in the portal, the system will generate the electronic certificate for the technical partner university to use in signing the document. One of the members of the technical partner university team will have a role of participant contact and additional members will have the role of team members. Other members who will be involved have the role of Project Legal Signatory and Project Financial Signatory.
The project officer from the European Union will contact the technical partner university to complete the process for signing the Grant Agreement and Grant Declaration as soon as the partner is identified. The project proposal will be shared to EU universities shown interest in participating as a technical partner university in this project for their review.