Maternal and neonatal infections are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in Benin. One major cause of peripartum infections is poor hygiene in healthcare facilities. Healthcare professionals are unaware or do not follow good hygiene practices, allowing multidrug-resistant bacteria to spread in hospitals and cause infections. Our Mimin project will address this poor hygiene practice in hospitals and also in remote communities among women who are pregnant or have recently given birth. We will identify key gaps in healthcare practices and current curricula for midwives, nurses, and physicians. Based on our analysis, we will design new education modules that will improve the hygiene training of all healthcare professionals. One module will specifically be designed for the continuing education of professionals already in employment. The second module will apply the Internationalization at Home e-learning approach to create co-education for midwifery students from two different countries. Newly trained professionals will be involved in creating an improved Hospital hygiene and infection prevention programme at six pilot hospitals, including the strengthening of an online technical platform for infection surveillance. In addition, outreach activities will be piloted in six disadvantaged communities to raise awareness of good hygiene practices and neonatal care among mothers. In order to achieve sustainable impact, a new national reference laboratory will be set up to enable the diagnosis and monitoring of pathogens causing blood-borne infections, during the project and in the future. The impact of all our activities will be assessed and the information will be shared with relevant stakeholders and policy makers. The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the Ministry of Health have been involved in project planning since the beginning, and thus our results will enable evidence-based decision-making in the design of new health and education policies.

"The project ""Strengthening expertise and bioinformatics to control antimicrobial resistance in West Africa"" (SEBA) will improve the quality of higher education in Benin and Burkina Faso, enabling them tackle the challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR genes allow bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics used to treat human and animal infections. In West Africa, as in other resource-poor settings, control of the occurrence and transmission of AMR is challenging due socioeconomic constraints, lack of expertise, and inadequate facilities to educate the experts. Through SEBA, we will strengthen the human and technical capacities of partner universities, enabling them to provide high-quality education and to train future experts in AMR management. We will design and implement a new Advanced Training Programme in AMR, providing 18 months’ training at MSc level. The training will include e-learning, partner country contact teaching, independent learning, and placement in a stakeholder institution. The crosscutting principles for the programme are: application of active learning techniques based on the modern learning theories; and application of the One Health approach, whereby human, animal and environmental health are treated as one entity, influenced by socioeconomic structures. Training in molecular biology techniques and bioinformatics will equip graduates with the skills to contribute fully in global AMR activities. Furthermore, they will develop their ability to interact with communities and stakeholders, including potential employers. The broad and deep hands-on training SEBA provides will enable students to become world-class experts in AMR management and control, able to positively impact West-Africa and globally. The universities will improve their competence in developing educational programmes, and will increase societal impact. Training will be subject to quality control and accreditation procedures to meet European higher education standards."

In most African countries, there is no systemic human biomonitoring and research on environmental exposure and the impact on the health of the African population.The objective of this project is closer cooperation between European (Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark) and African (Morocco, Benin, Ethiopia) universities by co-building capacities in environmental health for the assessment of environmental exposure in the population through universities and occupational health services. This will be done by promoting international training of researchers and health professionals, forming research groups, upgrading infrastructures for health monitoring, and establishing an African surveillance system with occupational physicians and university researchers, which will allow for the collection of statistically representative biomonitoring data on environmental agents and health.In the preparatory phase, we will map the current state of the art, i.e., experience, needs and priorities, in the different African countries (WP2). Next, we will set up targeted initiatives to enhance the education of researchers and occupational physicians in training. We will provide guidance, counselling and coaching for HEIs in environmental health research, make them familiar with EU standards, and aid in the set-up of national environment and health research groups (WP3). Meanwhile, we will set up a sentinel surveillance network for human biomonitoring (WP4). The results of the previous work packages will be used to connect European and African academics and health professionals specialized in environmental health to share and multiply the national and internal experience and expertise. This will be done by communication and dissemination through our joint website, meetings and conference(s)(WP5). Throughout the whole project, we will ensure the quality and management of the project and made a dedicated work package that covers the entire project period (WP1).

Food security in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) is under threat, and unless agricultural productivity in the region doubles within the next 2 decades, it will face major consequences in terms of famine and associated problems. Plant-parasitic nematodes (PPN) are microscopic roundworms whose unmanaged presence has a massively deleterious effect on crop productivity. They infect many plants of great economic importance, including maize, potato, soybean and banana, resulting in annual yield losses of billions of USD worldwide. Notably in SSA, a poor understanding and awareness of nematology within higher education has resulted in a lack of trained nematode scientists and professionals, both in non-profit and private sectors. As a consequence, the importance of PPN management remains overlooked, effectively sabotaging potential for improved agricultural productivity. The inclusion of nematology at the initial stages of higher education in Africa is crucial to maximise the number of students exposed to the discipline, resulting in better-prepared, fully-informed BSc and MSc graduates entering the job market. In SSA, increasing the numbers of well-trained nematology students will be vital in addressing the many nematology-related problems in the area, as well as in providing sustainable solutions to food security and environmental health in the region.The main aim of the NEMEDUSSA project is to support this academic transformation via promotion of nematology in selected Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and by transforming these selected HEIs into regional centres of excellence for nematology education. To achieve this overall objective, the aims of NEMEDUSSA are to:• enhance nematology capacity at HEIs by professionalisation of staff and by upgrading facilities;• develop BSc and MSc modules in nematology to be incorporated into existing HEI programmes; • establish a Pan-African Nematology Network; • disseminate awareness aand information to a range of stakeholders.