The project aims to strengthen educational innovation in African higher education through the implementation of a sustainable and efficient network of institutions (6 African and 6 European ones) as well as experts in the development of MOOC (massive open online course) from Cameroon and Senegal. This network would promote access to higher education and improve teaching conditions and learning practices. To this end, the project targets the adoption of innovative educational practices, namely practices designed to substantially improve students’ learning, initially by teachers from partner institutions and in the long term by teachers outside the consortium through the development of MOOC and blended learning. Based on a one-year preliminary research which identified the needs of end users (Roland, Stavroulakis, François & Emplit, 2017), the project is structured around 5 areas: networking, institutional support, pedagogical support, technology development in line with the sub-Saharan African context and an iterative approach throughout continuous assessment. Therefore, the activities aim to develop, through partners, a network of excellence in terms of development and reuse of MOOC that will ultimately be able to transfer its expertise at an institutional and at a national level; to develop, by building capacities, support structures for innovative pedagogical practices within partner institutions; to produce technology solutions tailored to the African context for online and offline distribution of MOOC; to adopt a quality approach throughout the project in order to improve every step; to prepare and support the development of 14 MOOC (two national and two per institution); to promote blended learning practices and arouse an institutional reflection on how MOOC should be integrated in curricula and learners’ certification through these devices.

Today, the quality of engineering training in Western Africa (more specifically in Senegal and Togo) has to meet international standards while being closely connected to local economic and sociocultural contexts. To reach this goal, global structuring involving representatives of the different economic sectors is required.Four European higher education institutions will support six schools from Senegal and Togo in their pursuit of autonomy by helping them to develop their own method of improving quality in order to obtain the CTI accreditation and the EUR-ACE label and, by doing so, to reach international standards.The six schools have been chosen to reflect as much as possible the diversity of institutional models and training programs, and to consider potential synergy beyond the countries involved in this project. They all possess both a strong will for improvement and local resources that have yet to be structured. An upgrade of the traditional academic streams along with the development of new specialties (applied mathematics) should highlight local skills that are much sought-after worldwide.Support, which includes training personnel, will structure all different phases of the process. It should allow the African institutions to decide what needs and evolutions are required. It will cover pedagogical, economical and institutional stakes in order to ensure autonomous and effective grasp of the quality process. It will lead them to design online training programs that could be shared.The acquired know-how and the general method will be assessed and adjusted when necessary. They will give rise to a White Paper and to the implementation of an adapted follow-up that should guarantee the sustainability of the quality process within the socio-economic and cultural context.