Strengthening public health research capacity to inform evidence based policies in Tunisia (CONFIDE) project aims to establish the Center for Evidence into Health Policy (C4EHP), sustained by all project partners in the benefit of the three Tunisian Universities involved in the project: University of Tunis, University of Sfax and University of Sousse. Core activities: (1) Development and implementation of C4EHP designed in order to ease future collaborations in the field of public health research, health promotion and evidence-based public health policy; (2) Delivery of the Research into Policy training program (modules: public health research, health promotion, evidence-based public health policy); (3) Consolidation of national and local partnerships between the public health academic and non-academic sector to provide trainees with a set of key transferable skills and career development opportunities through networking activities and trainee internship placements.At individual level the Research into Policy training program is expected to improve (1) lecturers and teaching assistants ’ knowledge and skills in evidence-based public health policy and enhance their ability to provide the further dissemination of knowledge by teaching the face-to-face modules within their universities and act as members of C4EHP; (2) trainees’ knowledge and skills on evidence-based public health policies. At institutional level, the project impacts the three Tunisian Universities, as well as the Ministry of Health and its subordonating public health authorities, NGOs and private companies by offering internship placements for trainees. C4EHP has as well a long-term impact in sustaining the network developed between the public and private institutions. At regional and national level, the impact is given by the development of an ecosystem C4EHP based on a communication platform offering a constant communication flow and sharing within all project's participants and beneficiaries.

CUDIMHA intends to address Tunisian’s needs of modernisation and internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) by developing an innovative 2 years Master in History and Archaeology providing labour market-oriented skills for the target audience holding Bachelor’s degree in the Humanities field. In particular, CUDIMHA aims at fostering innovative teaching, learning approaches and methodologies through the delivery of blended teaching units combining in presence and on-line courses, tutored projects on the field, traineeships, experience abroad keeping the focus on new contents and ICT tools use. The project targets objectives dealing with: 1) internationalisation and modernisation of HEIs History and Archaeology curriculum fostering innovative teaching/learning approaches; 2) better alignment of students' skills to labour market requirements; 3) sharing of best practices and knowledge transfer; 4) enhancing cooperation between Tunisian and EU universities, and also at national scale among Tunisian universities and other relevant stakeholders: some of them appearing in the project as Associated partners; 5) addressing gender inequality issues in the education and participation on the labour market; 6) raising awareness among project stakeholders regarding the cultural heritage in Tunisia. These objectives will be realized in close collaboration with Tunisian public authorities, encouraging the development of new contents, the use of ICT tools, experience abroad for Tunisian students and staff, involving 85 students (65 Tunisian), 51 academic and administrative staff people (41 Tunisian), civil servants representing Tunisian authorities.

The textile industry is the second largest industrial sector in Tunisia accounting for 161k jobs. However, the sector lacks innovation and competitiveness which caused a negative loss of employment of over 4k jobs a year during the last few years. The main barrier for the Tunisian textile industry is the low-value-added products that drives an intense competition in addition to the lack of own product. In this context, WINTEX project is oriented to the creation of innovation textiles centers to address the lack of competitiveness of the Tunisian textile sector with the support from Erasmus+ program by bringing EU expertise, idea and experience exchange, financial support and capacity building at Tunisian institutions oriented towards increasing the latent innovation capacity available in the country. In addition, WINTEX also aims to create an Academy Textile Industry council as a point of interaction and networking among HEIs and industrial partners. The main objective WINTEX project is to foster innovation and cooperation in Tunisian textile sector with transfer of knowledge from EU. The specific objectives will be the cration of 3 innovation textiles’ centers in the three Tunisian HEIs (ISMMM, USF and ISET), to build capacity program addressed to the centers operators and the creation of the Academia Textile Industry Council as a platform for collaboration among Tunisian stakeholders. The project will boost participation of students and staff in the textile centers by means of traineeships in order to set in place a collaborative and innovative mindset to the future generation of the textile industry technicians and managers. Ultimately, the goal is to weave innovation among academia and industry to support the development of innovations and entrepreneurship in the textile sector in Tunisia providing students, researchers and professionals in textile field with competencies and skills needed by the market.

SAFE will promote positive and practical valorization of reclaimed urban wastewater as a valuable alternative source for agricultural purposes. SAFE will provide a multi-beneficial approach with novel, unconventional and environmental decentralized wastewater solution that will be respectful of environment and biodiversity of the agro-system. SAFE will optimize the proposed water reuse strategies, ensuring their safety (both for environment and human health), their sustainability, adaptation to water scarcity, local conditions, and farms necessities, boosting the local economy. Main specific objectives are: ● Development, test and validation of novel low cost and low energy urban decentralized wastewater treatments aimed at enhanced renewable water supply. ● Evaluation of wastewater treatments impact in plants/crops performance using modern -omics tools. ● Evaluation of local biodiversity and co-benefits. ● Promotion of environment respectful practices like pest management by biofertilizers such as Trichoderma sp., including knowledge transfer for their practical implementation. ● Safety evaluation related to the proposed approaches, including monitoring of emerging pollutants, in water, soil and produced crops. ● Development of general management models able to simulate local and decentralized agro-ecological practices in several scenarios. ● Optimization of implemented approach in terms of techno-economic analysis, environmental impact and local feasibility. ● Local promotion of the proposed solutions both in terms of farmers’ acceptability and valorization of their economic value. SAFE advanced and sustainable wastewater treatment strategies include the use of natural solutions such as constructed wetlands (UM), high rate anaerobic bioreactors (IRSA-CNR), adsorption on natural-based materials (UNIBAS), local biochar (CERTE, FSS) and pillared clays with organic and/or mineral compounds (UDL). Reuse will be ensured by a complete effluent characterization before and after any considered treatment including any parameters required by the present legislation for water reuse and even assessing emerging pollutants (UM, ICRA, CERTE), pathogens (UNIBAS, SAPIENZA, UDL). The reaction path of target compounds in the irrigation system water-soil-plant (CERTE) will be followed at macroscopic scale, focusing mainly on salt, nutrients and biodiversity evolution. In this context, SAFE partners will perform identification of genes and molecular markers (ELGO – Dimitra) linked to yield and boundary condition (such as drought or salt abiotic stresses) and promoting root branching and increasing shoot biomass by Trichoderma species (UNIBAS). An integrated water balance supported by techno-economic analysis (UNIBAS, SAPIENZA), and specific characterization of the soil (UNIBAS) will allow the optimization of the irrigation and storage strategies for the target sites (IVA Rabat). Modeling and following optimization by mean of modern tools (SAPIENZA) will conduct to the choice of the best approach suitable to be implemented. Collected data will provide a validation in a real environment of the developed SAFE methodology as a general tool suitable to be applied in other Mediterranean areas where water scarcity and climatic conditions play a strong role for agriculture practice. Environmental and human health risk assessment (ICRA) of irrigation practices will be performed based on the characterization of water (IVA Rabat), soils, and plants (tomatoes, oregano, and lettuce as reference) and tested on site (Tunisia, France, Greece and Algeria). Multi-disciplinarity of SAFE partners gives a holistic approach (knowledge advancement and know-how transfer of innovative treatments developed, tested and on site validated) able to provide integrated procedures to increase crop yields and farmers’ incomes. The new farming system will consider the impact of proposed new practices on biodiversity and whole ecosystem (water, energy, soil fertility, crop yields).

PACTUM project aims at providing a high-quality, multidisciplinary and stimulating one-year master programme in social, political and behavioural sciences. The goal here is to develop an innovative approach that might create positive effects both for the Tunisian teaching staff and the students. With regard to the former, the opportunity to establish and cultivate contacts with important European universities and professors could be relevant to learn new methodological techniques and develop a broader and more comparativist approach to the study of social, and more specifically political, sciences. In a similar way, also European instructors might benefit much from Tunisian academic staff, due to their skills and knowledge of the cultural and political environment. Coming to Tunisian students, instead, the establishment of a new master, prevalently (although not entirely) taught in English and with a specific focus on political science, sociology, science of the administration, and international relations provides opportunity to find a job both in the public and private sector, considering the particularly challenging environment for young graduate students. A closely connected goal here is to train tomorrow’s public employees in order to enhance the professionalization of the bureaucratic body and its capacity to formulate, implement, and evaluate public policies. However, more short-terms goal are presented as well in the project. In fact, from the third year on, through summer schools dedicated (although not specifically) to public employees, there is an attempt to improve immediately the skills and capacity of the bureaucracy in Tunisia.