The GREATER project aims at supporting Rwandan country in the energy transition needed for its social and economic growth. Smart, renewable energy will allow for filling the energy gap, enabling full, equal access of the population to electricity. Low-power, off-grid, distributed power generation will play a key role, this calling for both the training of a new generation of skilled professionals and for the widespread diffusion of green awareness in the national community. GREATER project aims at tackling both aspects by implementing an inclusive, participated design flow. Core activity will result in the design of 8 new/renewed curricula in the field of smart and green energy: innovation will come from the introduction of strong digital (Internet of Things) foundations and from a strongly practice-oriented training. Training will also be based on the innovative introduction of a network of 4 Living Labs. Living Labs will be real-life locations, hosting different activities, which will be equipped with smart (photovoltaic) power stations: from the one side living labs will allow students to experience in a realistic environment; from the other one, Living Labs will provide a strategic hub for community engagement. A full range of representative stakeholders will be enclosed in all design activities, since earlier phases, through a collaborative design thinking procedure. This will ensure project outcomes to be consistent with community needs and expectancies, in terms of educational goals, better employability and socioeconomic benefits coming from the project. Community engagement will therefore be twofold: at the project “input” side, insights and addresses from the community will drive educational design activities, at the “output” side, beyond academic outcomes, transfer activities are planned to tailor specific outcomes targeting different community segments, caring mostly at youth and people with fewer opportunities.

SESA will facilitate a structured co-development process, which starts with the co-development of energy access innovations that have a high potential for take-up and are tested, validated and later replicated. Each technology will be demonstrated in the living lab, and a corresponding information and training package is created. Each of the living lab team will consist of technology experts, local implementation partners (members of the consortium) along with local authorities (associated partners) and innovators (recruited through the seed-funding call), guided by business development, finance and policy experts. Demonstration actions will aim to test innovative technologies and services in different contexts that have a high level of replicability and a high potential for long-term sustainability. The project aims to achieve a high level of replicability of actions. As part of an effort to go beyond the state of the art and maximise the project?s impact, the project will co-develop innovations with local partners and cooperate closely with sister projects to exploit synergies. Solutions that will be tested in this project have been selected on their basis of their replication potential. Demonstration concepts aim to integrate several solutions to provide essential energy services to rural and urban communities and create easily replicable business opportunities for local entrepreneurs. The co-developed demonstration actions will be initially tested in the Kenya living lab and based on the initial learnings, various aspects of the tested innovations will be validated in living labs in different socio-economic operating environments (Ghana, South Africa, Malawi and Morocco). The learning from the validation living labs will strengthen the applicability and replicability of the technologies as well as the basic business concepts, which will be shared in the SESA toolbox and incubator programme.

The LEAP-RE programme aligns with and responds to the AU-EU high-level policies and specific objectives of the CCSE Roadmap. It seeks to create a long-term partnership of African and European stakeholders in a quadruple helix approach: government (programme owners and funding agencies), research and academia, private sector, and civil society. Impact will be sought by creating a framework, methodology, and cooperation model. The aim is to reduce fragmentation by aligning existing bilateral and multilateral frameworks. LEAP-RE establishes and jointly implements research, innovation, and capacity-building activities that respond to the Multi-Annual Roadmaps (MARs) developed in PRE-LEAP-RE. The programme opted for a large-scale, inclusive consortium of 96 partners from 34 countries and 2 international organisations, to ensure a broad thematic, geographical and stakeholder coverage, and to demonstrate the feasibility of the collaboration and build trust in view of a long-term partnership addressing the post-2025 period. LEAP-RE draws on the experience and partnership developed in PRE-LEAP-RE, which conceptualised and developed a framework for long-term, bi-regional cooperation in research, innovation, and capacity building in renewable energies. This partnership is further strengthened by previous collaboration between partners in other projects supporting the EU-Africa HLPD on STI, such as LEAP-Agri, ERAfrica, LEAP4FNSSA, RINEA, and CAAST-Net Plus. Furthermore, the proposal includes a number of R&I partners, 8 individual projects (formalised as Work Packages), which were chosen among expressions of interest received in late 2019.

The overall objective of the project is to contribute towards increased capacity of higher education to support and scale digital transformation in Eastern Africa, with the aim to ensure rehabilitation services for all. An estimated 2.4 billion people globally are currently living with health conditions that benefit from rehabilitation. The digital transformation provides an opportunity to have more accessible and personalized model and system of rehabilitation in Eastern Africa. Project specific objectives are: 1) Strengthened role of higher education in the promotion of rehabilitation in the society, including innovation and business ecosystems, 2) Enhanced pedagogical opportunities and increased quality of education in Eastern Africa in digital rehabilitation for the social, health and education sectors. Project reaches the objectives through capacity building and development between the higher education and the working life, promoting on-going cooperation between the project programme and partner countries. Project answers to the need to strategically leverage digital tools, technologies, and services in rehabilitation through educational development. Primary target groups of the project include teachers and professionals, students, and the working life. Other target groups include various professionals in social and health care, the business sector, rehabilitation clients, and the society at large. Persons benefitting directly from the project include 950 persons. Through project activities, the outputs to be established are Eastern Africa digital rehabilitation Innovation Community (IC), enhancing the pedagogical competence/skills and increased knowledge of teachers and students related to digital rehabilitation, renewing partner institutions’ curricula on multidisciplinary digital rehabilitation for working life and increasing the awareness and understanding of digital rehabilitation among key stakeholders in Eastern Africa.