Boosting Agricultural Studies in Sub-Sahara AfricaAccording to numerous authors, agriculture and farming are a major source of livelihood in the countries of Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), contributing between 15 % and 40 % of the gross domestic product, providing livelihood for over 70% of SSA population through family farming and employing at least 34% of the active workforce with its potential heavily underexploited. One of the reasons are poor connections between tertiary education as the knowledge base and immediate agricultural producers (farms). Furthermore, according to various authors, gender is an important factor in understanding every aspect of agricultural and rural development in SSA. Women are essential to agricultural production but they lack adequate access to land and inputs, they tend to be excluded from decision-making and have less chances of accessing tertiary education, along with so many poverty-stricken individuals coming from remote areas.BASIS addresses the aforementioned issues by introducing interventions in higher education curricula towards a more field-based and competence-oriented knowledge and skills highly valued at the labour market. This will establish lasting and systemic exchange between the tertiary education and smallholder farmers in SSA. Likewise, BASIS introduces mechanisms and measures to increase access to tertiary education for women and poverty-stricken individuals from remote areas, and provide them with more equitable chances of employment and growth. Project outcomes will create opportunities for further innovation and modernization of higher education and agricultural production in SSA, equipping higher education institutions, their staff and students with different social and economic background, as well as smallholders in remote rural areas with essential mechanisms for sustainable advancement and growth.

An African-European consortium of 6 SSA countries and 3 European countries, gathering 12 partners is proposing a unique and innovative scalable training program and network that will produce empowered infectious diseases experts to lead and drive research from and for sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), at levels of early-stage career (post-graduate certification and doctoral) and mid-stage career (post-doctoral) in an integrated program of health informatics and data sciences (BRIDGE PROGRAM). The program consortium will set up 5 Centre of Excellence (CoEs) in SSA countries (Benin, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa). The CoEs will serve as training setting, field research setting and a hub for harmonized infectious diseases data, and all will recruit candidates from their countries for certification program, doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships but only 3 CoEs will be the degree awarding institutions. The degree awarding CoEs have been selected based on the existing university capacity to offer a degree awarding program or built on the existing partnerships between selected SSA public health institutes and local universities with degree awarding programs capacity. The program leverages the established collaborations between European and SSA institutions, utilizing accumulated medical data, including Electronic Health Records, registries, and biobanks. At the end of 54 months, program will have strengthened the institutional research leading capacities with at least 20 trainees per CoE with post-graduate certification, a total of 10 graduates with PhDs and a total of 4 post-doctoral fellows, skilled for harmonizing and analysing fragmented large data to derive data-driven insights and guide health policies. The CoEs embedded within public health institutions, with continuous mentorship from an international scientific community and a ready to use large amount of data, ensure the sustainability of training and collaborative research beyond the program grant.