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.

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.