AfroGrow proposes a comprehensive strategy to promote and advance sustainable agroforestry practices across Africa, addressing key challenges related to climate resilience, biodiversity conservation, and socio-economic development. By focusing on collaboration, innovation, and capacity building, AfroGrow aims to transform agroforestry systems into resilient, multi-functional landscapes that enhance food security, mitigate climate change, and promote inclusive growth. Through a network of six Living Labs, AfroGrow will facilitate participatory research and innovation, enabling local communities, researchers, and policymakers to co-create sustainable agroforestry solutions tailored to diverse ecological and socio-economic contexts. These Living Labs will serve as hubs for knowledge exchange, technology transfer, and capacity building, empowering stakeholders to adopt and implement best practices in agroforestry management. AfroGrow will develop regional suitability maps for local plant species and animal breeds, facilitating informed decision-making for stakeholders. Simultaneously, it will conduct comprehensive impact assessments of regenerative management measures, providing evidence- and data-based recommendations for policy formulation and decision-making. This will enhance ecosystem resilience through sustainable land management practices and secure human well-being. Central to AfroGrow's approach is the promotion of gender equality and social inclusion, recognizing the critical role of women and youth in agroforestry development. By fostering equitable participation and representation, AfroGrow aims to amplify the voices of marginalized groups and ensure that agroforestry interventions benefit all members of society. Through collaborative partnerships, interdisciplinary research, and stakeholder engagement, AfroGrow seeks to catalyze a paradigm shift towards resilient, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable agroforestry systems within the African Union.

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 Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (EPN-2024-RI) will provide the pan-EU infrastructure needed to address the major scientific and technological challenges facing modern planetary science and strengthen Europe’s position at the forefront of space exploration. EPN-2024-RI builds on the foundations of a series of highly successful EU-funded projects that have created the leading Virtual Observatory for planetary data and the largest, most diverse collection in the world today of field and laboratory facilities capable of simulating and analysing planetary environments. EPN-2024-RI will provide Transnational Access (TA) to an enhanced set of world-leading field and laboratory facilities, Virtual Access (VA) to state-of-the-art data services and tools linked to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and Networking Activities (NA) to widen the user base and draw in new partners from Under Represented States (URS), non-EU countries, industry and interdisciplinary fields, and to train the next generation of RI leaders and users. With 56 beneficiaries, from both industry and academic sectors, providing access to 31 TA facilities on 5 continents and 4 VA services linking over 100 data services and catalogues, EPN-2024-RI represents a step-change in ambition for planetary science worldwide. Innovations include the establishment of a ground based observation network to support space based missions, the launch of an interactive mapping service to provide virtual exploration of planetary surfaces, and the development of machine learning tools for data mining to fully exploit and analyse planetary data sets. EPN-2024-RI will establish global collaborations and an international userbase for the RI through inclusion of partners in Africa, Asia and South America. Ultimately, EPN-2024-RI will support the transition of this unique infrastructure to a sustainable future within the structure of the Europlanet Society.

With the advent of Industry 4.0 has come challenges and opportunities in the manufacturing sector as well as manufacturing education. Smart Manufacturing Engineering Education for Knowledge Economy (SME2KE) develops postgraduate manufacturing curricula (with emphasis on laser-based manufacturing (LbM) technologies) and pedagogical approaches to strengthen future manufacturing engineers’ competences for transforming their national economies to knowledge-based society as they improve profitability of businesses. SME2KE aims at (i) training the knowledge, competencies and performance of students and academic instructors, (ii) updating the existing master’s curriculum by incorporating taught modules including elements of LbM applications, big data science (BDS), machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) towards empowering graduates with skills to fabricate products sustainably without defects and wastes; (iii) developing a unique African e-platform to support education and training related to LbM technology at Masters level. SME2KE enables partner HEIs to demonstrate relevance in developing responsive activities which promote socio-economic recovery, growth, and prosperity by developing innovative curricula which are linked to manufacturing business activities. It contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Green Deal, digital transformation and data technologies, alliances for sustainable growth and jobs by supporting a successful green and sustainable global economic recovery in the partner countries. SME2KE reforms postgraduate manufacturing education by imparting graduates with problem-solving and entrepreneurial skills via problem-based learning (PBL) methods, students-centred teaching, and and real-life manufacturing challenges. SME2KE establishes sustainable manufacturing education pedagogies in the local context via collaboration among the LbM research establishment, manufacturing industries, and academic institutions.

Approximate 30% of the emissions of e-vehicles comes from the manufacturing processes, due to un-optimised material utilisation, low process efficiency, product defects and waste. Current state-of-the-art identifies laser material processing technologies the heart of e-vehicles manufacturing. Advances in laser technologies and new generation scanning optics in fuel cell and battery manufacturing have the potential to offer enhanced utilisation of materials, improved process efficiency and product quality, allowing significant reduction in CO2 equivalent. Lasers4NetZero will establish an innovative training programme that aims at coaching a new generation of creative, entrepreneurial and innovative doctoral candidates (PhDs) focused on laser material processing, artificial intelligence for quality control, advanced process simulation and predictive lifecycle and sustainability analysis for e-vehicles manufacturing. This novel programme will contain both scientific and transferable training activities and will benefit from training across the network (e.g. secondments). In total, 10 PhDs will be enrolled, developing individual research projects within the project. Individual PhD projects will integrate novel methods and approaches for laser material processing (cutting and welding) aided by laser beam shaping and ultra-fast scanning technologies with the ultimate goal to enhance utilisation of materials, improve process efficiency and product quality and reduce defects and waste. The consortium involves 6 Academic partners and 8 Industrial partners guaranteeing that final solutions will be close to the market. The close cooperation among multidisciplinary partners will ensure knowledge transfer to cross the valley-of-death between research and implementation. To maximise impact, two demonstrators (fuel cells and battery systems) will be developed in conjunction with the Industrial partners.