In the face of climate change, Africa is more than ever in need of climate services, scientific infrastructure and skilled people who are trained in providing solutions for their countries in how best deal with the adverse impacts of climate change. Over the past years, European governments and funding agencies have invested in climate change research and capacity building in various regions of Africa. However, these initiatives, mostly work independently and do not seek for synergies or collaborations.
This session aims to bring these capacity building initiatives together, provide them a stage to present themselves and a platform for networking, finding synergies and collaborations. We invite initiatives of any kind to present their work related to climate change capacity development in Africa. This also includes climate change-related topics such as, floods, droughts, natural hazards, land degradation, and so on. We welcome the full-variety of capacity building initiatives, including small-scale teaching or workshops (online or on site), co-development of research or monitoring infrastructure, master programmes, doctoral programmes, training of local communities or single research projects that include a capacity development component.
After getting an insight in the full bandwidth of capacity development initiatives in this session, we aim to follow-up with a splinter meeting in which the foundation of a European-African Network for Capacity Development in climate change Adaptation research in Africa (NetCDA) will be discussed. The NetCDA network should provide the basis for future exchange, sharing best practices and finding collaborations between various initiatives and institutions. We invite all session participants and other interested climate scientists from both continents to attend this splinter meeting. More details of the timing and location of this splinter meeting will follow.