AMBERO goes UNI

© Prof. Dr. Jürgen Runge

Two month advanced training (Summer School) for lecturers from central Africa in the fields of forestry/environment/climate

During August and September 2016 AMBERO Consulting will organize a summer school in Frankfurt together with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit mbH (GIZ) and the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF). 21 lecturers from in total nine different Central Africa countries will work for the strengthening and further development of educational institutions in Central Africa in the fields of forestry and environment.

The summer school will be held at the Geo Centre of the Goethe University Frankfurt and will be divided into a total of eight modules. These will deal with topics of forestry and environmental sciences, as well as with methodological and theoretical aspects.

In the course of the summer school, participants from the 22 member institutions of the RIFFEAC network (Réseau des institutions de Formation Forestière et Environnementale de l’Afrique Centrale) will learn, how to strengthen their competences in the fields of curricula and further training modules development. Apart from that, the main emphasis will be on capacity building, regarding the development of cooperation, both with the private and the professional sector (North-South, South-South).

The RIFFEAC-Network was founded in Libreville, Gabun in 2001 and by now consists of 22 member institutions from nine different central African countries. The network supports the promotion and further development of forestry and environment related education, as well as further training in the region. With this approach, the network aims at make and increase sustainably progress in terms of education and training policies in this sector.

The overall objective of the summer school is that the ambassadors of the member institutions from the region will after the summer school act as disseminators of the knowledge and strategies gained. Furthermore, each participant is supposed to develop a so-called ‘transfer project’. These will be put to practice with the support of the GIZ program ‘Regional support of the COMIFAC’ after the return of the ambassadors to their respective home country. Such a ‘transfer project’ could for instance be the development of a forestry and environment related further training program or even a study program.

At the end of the summer school, the participants will do a ten-days study trip for the purpose of knowledge transferal between the different players and the establishment of networks for future collaborations. In the course of this trip, participants and the directors of the RIFFEAC institutions will visit the universities in Kassel, Göttingen and Hamburg, as well as the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation in Enschede (the Netherlands) and the national park ‘Kellerwald Edersee’. Furthermore, they will meet with representatives of the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and other institutions.

More information on RIFFEAC here