Empowerment and training of local communities in Sub-Saharan Africa – Capacity building

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One of the main pillars of the “Africa REP” programme is the definition of a new paradigm for the concept of capacity building. Indeed, to truly sustain the development of low-income countries (like Sub-Saharan African countries), the classic concept of training is no more sufficient. Within this project, FEEM is able to promote a proactive and inclusive approach for shared research and knowledge transfer, which is able to involve local partners directly in a continuous process of growth and soft-skills development, thanks to cooperation and organization of courses and trainings. Not only this approach fosters the transfer of theoretical and applied research tools, but it also supports the growth of local leaders for future African countries who will be able to face environmental and economic challenges and to promote sustainable development policies based on national goals and integrated in the sustainable international framework.

The shared research activity contributes to the development of a modelling framework based on the integration of different tools. These modelling tools contribute to the analysis of impacts of different improvement strategies of the national policies at a triple level (i.e. economic, environmental and social). To perform this research, a strong cooperation and partnership with local stakeholders is fundamental for data gathering and knowledge transfer. Thanks to this activity, the main output is a modelling framework based on an open software, free and replicable, ready to be transferred to local authorities and partners through the organization of courses and workshops where local communities are directly involved, to shape leaders for the countries able to drive a sustainable development.