Intern
Earth Observation Research Cluster

NetCDA - Capacity building, West Africa, Climate change

Subject: Capacity building, West Africa, Climate change

Study site: West Africa

Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Duration: 01/01/2024 to 12/31/2025

Contact: Alexandra Bell

Project team at the JMU:  Michael Thiel, Alexandra Bell, Sabine Oppmann

 

The aim of the “European Academic Network for Capacity Development in Climate Change Adaptations in Africa” (NetCDA) is to strengthen academic education on climate change adaptation strategies in Africa in close collaboration with the graduate school program of the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL). 

Since 2010, WASCAL is dedicated to capacity development and to strengthening the research infrastructure related to climate change. The academic education of young professionals in association with the German counterparts is also a pivotal competence of their work. Since 2017, the Department of Remote Sensing at the Institute for Geography and Geology at Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg (JMU) has played a main supporting role in strengthening these existing cooperations with West African countries and in expanding the network.

This work shall now be expanded and intensified. Over the next two years, the NetCDA project consortium aims to:

  • support WASCAL doctoral students in continuing and successfully completing their research work, including the supervision by German partners and research visits at the German partner institutions for up to six months
  • strengthen the implementation of a Germany network of WASCAL graduate schools
  • initiate an academic network that brings together climate change researchers from Europe and Africa who are active in education. 

The project is coordinated by the Department of Remote Sensing at the Institute for Geography and Geology at Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg (JMU) and is conducted in a consortium of nine German project partners. Besides the University of Würzburg, the consortium includes the University of Bonn, University of Rostock, United Nations University EHS Bonn, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, Technical University Neubrandenburg, University Hohenheim and the International Center for Water Resources and Global Change at the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG).

NetDCA is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the grant number 01LG2301A.