Intra-ACP Academic Mobility Scheme kicks off with a Coordinators’ Meeting in Addis Ababa-Ethiopia

Meeting participants

Following the award of the contracts to the three winning proposals for the first lot of the Intra-ACP Academic Mobility Scheme, a joint coordinators’ meeting was held at the African Union (AU) Headquarters, Addis Ababa Ethiopia. This meeting, that was 3-5 October 2011, was co-hosted by the AU Commission’s Education and Culture Directorate and the European Commission’s (EC) Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. This important mobility scheme is an expansion of the Julius Mwalimu Nyerere Programme, with funds from the EC via the 10th EDF, and builds on the EC’s Erasmus Mundus Action 2 programme.a Coordinators’ Meeting in Addis Ababa-Ethiopia

The main goals of this meeting were to:

  •    explain the overall programme framework
  •    discuss the contractual obligations in terms rules and regulations
  •    discuss the entire project implementation cycle
  •    clarify various issues that may come up during implementation of the various projects.
     

In addition, our consortium took advantage of this meeting to discuss in detail various steps required to have a successful collaboration during  the implementation of the mobility scheme. During the meeting, best practices were shared by experienced partners from the EU region and an application database demonstrated to the partner universities representatives.

At the first meeting of the interim board, the consortium adopted the acronym STREAM (STRengthening African Higher Education through Academic Mobility) for the project. STREAM, coordinated by the Polytechnic of Namibia, had all the partners represented at this meeting. The interim board also endorsed proposals and action plan of how to implement the project as presented by the coordinator including financial management and governance structures of the STREAM project.

Two other coordinators that were present at this meeting were Stellenbosch University, South Africa, representing a consortium of six universities and L’Institute International d’Ingenierie de L’Eau et de L’ Environment, Burkina Faso, representing a consortium of 12.