Natural hazards, such as extreme weather events, are exacerbated by climate change. As a result, emergency responses are becoming more protracted, expensive, frequent, and stretching limited available resources. This is especially apparent in rapidly warming regions. MedEWSa addresses these challenges by providing novel solutions to ensure timely, precise, and actionable impact and finance forecasting, and early warning systems (EWS) that support the rapid deployment of first responders to vulnerable areas. Specifically, MedEWSa will deliver a sophisticated, comprehensive, and innovative pan-European–Mediterranean–African solution comprising a range of complementary services. Building on existing tools MedEWSa will develop a fully integrated impact-based multi-hazard EWS. This call contained five expected outcomes, all of which will be specifically addressed by MedEWSa. Led by WMO, MedEWSa will be an exemplar of the UN Secretary General’s March 2022 call to ensure that everyone on Earth is protected from extreme weather and climate-related hazards by EWS within the next five years. Through eight carefully selected pilot sites (areas in Europe, the southern Mediterranean, and Africa with a history of being impacted by natural hazards and extreme events with cascading effects), four twins will be created: ● Twin #1: Greece (Attica) – Ethiopia (National Parks): wildfires and extreme weather events (droughts, wind) ● Twin #2: Italy (Venice) – Egypt (Alexandria / Nile Delta): coastal floods and storm surges ● Twin #3: Slovakia (Kosice) – Georgia (Tbilisi): floods and landslides ● Twin #4: Spain (Catalonia) – Sweden (countrywide): heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. The twins will bridge areas with different climatic/physiographic conditions, yet subject to similar hazards, and are well positioned to deliver long-term bi-directional knowledge transfer. They will demonstrate the transferability and versatility of the tools developed in MedEWSa.

In response to the present objectives of the EU-Africa partnership in science, technology and innovation, and addressing the STI priorities of the 2014 EU-Africa Summit, RINEA addresses three specific and complementary objectives by a range of targeted activities: 1. Strengthening the quality and quantity of partnerships between research and innovation actors in EU Member states, in Associated Countries and in countries in Africa through networking events between research and business communities, through proposing the elimination of cooperation obstacles and optimising framework conditions and through raising awareness and disseminate information of cooperation opportunities for research and innovation partnerships offered by H2020 and by other major programmes in Europe and Africa. 2. Encouraging transnational coordination of programmes and policies for international cooperation in STI for greater coherence, joint ownership and resource efficiency, through advancing the model established by ERAfrica for jointly owned EU-Africa funding instruments for STI cooperation and through facilitating the launch and the management of calls for proposals around topics of mutual concern and relevance to the EU-Africa bi-regional partnership. 3. Supporting and enriching formal and informal processes of bi-regional STI policy dialogue between the EU and Africa through building wider understanding of the objectives and outcomes of formal bi-regional policy dialogue, through contributing to the evidence base for policy and decision making, including strategic priority setting, by the recognised governance structures of the EU-Africa STI partnership, e.g. HLPD, through supporting the implementation of outcomes of formal policy dialogue and through fostering exchange between formal and informal dialogue processes, and with relevant regional and sub-regional structures such as SFIC, AU technical committees and RECs. RINEA´s activities will build on recent and existing initiatives an

The general objective of LEAP4FNSSA is to establish a sustainable structure, or ‘Platform’, for the efficient and coherent implementation of the AU-EU Research and Innovation Partnership as described in the FNSSA Roadmap. Under the aegis of the HLPD and its Bureau, and by building upon related projects such as RINEA, CAAST-Net. Plus, ProIntensAfrica and LEAP-Agri, LEAP4FNSSA aims to achieve this overall objective through three specific objectives: - Increase the synergies and coherence between actors, research and innovation projects, initiatives and programmes, through the development of institutional alliances and clusters of projects; - Develop a learning environment and a large knowledge base, including monitoring and evaluation activities, creating communication and links between different initiatives to improve STI cooperation; - Establish a long term and sustainable governance and funding mechanism for the Platform. To reach these objectives, LEAP4FNSSA will build on a large consortium of experienced partners and implement a methodology based on 3 principles: long-term impact, relevance of the outputs to the HLPD, and innovative actions. Long-term impact of the CSA relates to its main objective to enable and catalyse the transformation of the existing AU EU FNSSA Partnership into a bi-continental Platform for collaboration, organised along a Knowledge and Management Communication Framework. Outputs relevant to the HLPD will be achieved by connecting and framing activities of all Work Packages on top of the supporting activities specifically requested in the SFS-33-2018. Innovative actions are foreseen to run the Platform efficiently throught e.g. the development of a new approach to information mapping, text and data mining, and testing of multistakeholder alliances at a regional level and the mobilisation of actors to manage research and innovation programming in a 4-steps management cycle.