CT-Luso intends to (1) draw an updated diagnosis and screenshot of the research ethics infrastructure in the 5 Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PSAC), (2) identify the needed transformations, draft strategic recommendations to carry out this transformation and design a policy roadmap for its implementation, (3) reinforce existing legislation and promote the necessary regulations for a robust ethical-legal framework, supporting the revision of internal regulations for the operation of RECs and NRAs, and promote the development of codes of scientific integrity in research institutions, (4) strengthen the skills of RECs and NRAs, researchers (senior, junior and post-graduate students) by drafting guidelines for the practice of the different roles required by the evaluation of CTs. It is necessary to work with all 5 PSAC simultaneously on four different levels, all equally indispensable and complementary: legislative, institutional, professional, and procedural, which in turn requires political commitment. CT-Luso proposes to reach the abovementioned objectives by (1) building an international team of legal experts and promoting dialogue for the co-creation of legislative and organizational recommendations (2) creating an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral education (3) creating an advanced progressive training program for members of RECs, NRA, CTs Centres and researchers (4) hands-on experience developed in a finely tuned manner and according to country specificities, complementing the previous education and training programs (5) assess whether each PSAC has the necessary installed capacity to be included in the international CTs roadmap and in particular to create a Portuguese-speaking cluster by simulating the procedures under the development of an academic CT (6) in parallel, the legislative and regulatory transformations to be implemented will require the political power involvement, acting in a double approach, both bottom-up and top-down.

Climate change and induced disasters have direct negative impacts on the environment. Increasing the knowledge of experts on using spatial methods to cope with climate change effects and related disasters, as well as providing proper tools for spatial analysis to support planning and decision making, will improve the quality of environmental management in Mozambique and Africa.Three 10 ECTS courses will be developed in this project for training students on the applications and use of spatial methods for disaster modelling and management. Disaster management authorities, organisations, and companies in Mozambique need Geographical Information Science (GIS)/Remote Sensing (RS) experts to cope with an increasing influence of climate change, while there is lack of experts on these topics. This implies that the students who will be trained on these topics will have a high chance of being employed. A disaster management tool (DMT) will be developed. The partners, together with the public, will at the end be the main users of the DMT, and their staff will be using the developed courses to increase their knowledge on the applications of GIS/RS in disaster modelling and management. In general, this project establishes a type of cooperation between universities, government and business that supports the “knowledge triangle innovation” thematic area.eLearning systems will be established in Mozambican partner universities, so the developed courses as well as other programmes can be offered in distance mode. This is very beneficial specially for vulnerable groups who cannot attend in-campus programmes. Trainers will be trained on how to teach the courses. Dissemination activities will be conducted to increase the general knowledge and awareness of public and organizations on spatial methods and their applications for disaster management.

IntercropValueES aims to exploit benefits of intercropping to design and manage productive, diversified, resilient, profitable, environmentally friendly cropping systems acceptable to farmers and actors in the agri-food chain. It will develop both a scientific research action for better understanding and modelling intimate intercrop functioning and a detailed analysis of lock-ins and levers at the value chain level to identify credible solutions that can be adopted by farmers and value chain actors. As a multi-disciplinary and multi-actor project, it brings together scientists and local actors representing food value chain. It includes 27 participants from 15 countries (3 continents) from a wide diversity of organizations and stakeholders. IntercropValuES organizes its activities in 6 objectives, to: 1) support the design of locally relevant, legitimate and innovative agri-food chains, through 13 Co-Innovation Case Studies; 2) understand the functioning and G*G*E*M interactions allowing the selection of compatible ideotypes and the optimization of machinery and management strategies for maximizing the productivity and delivery of ecosystem services with better soil health and mitigation of GHG (meta experiment 15 sites); 3) produce novel information, improved methods and tools for intercrop management and the assessment of their performance and profitability; 4) unravel intercropping performance by modelling; 5) analyze grain and sanitary quality of cereal-legume intercrops, functional qualities for food processing and new products, 6) uncover key barriers and levers at the value chain level to boost development, and identify new market avenues and solutions to increase economic added-value of intercrops. The Comms and Dissemination Plan is designed to diffuse outcomes widely by adapted channels to different end-users, such as farmers, advisors, food processing companies and machinery industries, retailers and citizens, academia, policymakers and influence bodies.