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 "Construction and Territorial Development Engineering (ICAT)" project that we are proposing is part of this approach and aims to structure two complementary training courses around sustainable construction and the rational development of cities and territories. The specificity of this project is to contribute significantly to taking into account the major challenges of the 21st century. ICAT aims to train future actors in the sustainable transformation of our societies, responsible and scientifically enlightened citizens capable of integrating the physical limits of our planet and the resulting social consequences. The project is coordinated by Université Le Havre Normandie (ULHN) and the National University of Sciences, Technologies, Engineering and Mathematics (UNSTIM) in Benin. It is led on the French side by a consortium of five higher education establishments which have complementary expertise from a scientific, technical, pedagogical, administrative and financial management point of view: ULHN, INSA-Rouen, CNAM, CYU and INSA Rennes. To boost and consolidate the partnership, the project aims at developing and managing a scientific and technological platform during the first year, which will closely associate professionals from the socio-economic world. It will be called “Integrated City of Transfer of Knowledge, Innovation, Expertise and Entrepreneurship (CITI2E)”. The two pathways offered are: - The “Geomatics, Sustainable Cities and Territories (GVTD)” training course, which aims to promote the professions of technical land developer. - The “Building, Public Works and Sustainable Construction (BTPCD)” training course, which aims to develop construction trades supporting sustainable infrastructure.

The main aim of the proposed project is to use genomic epidemiology of tuberculosis, malaria and emerging and re-emerging pathogens in Africa as to better understand disease etiology, dynamics of disease transmission, and evolution of drug-resistant pathogens. The study also aims to increase Africa's capacity in bioinformatics, genomics, genomics data management, biobanking, and promote data sharing. Our goal is to improve the health of Africans with innovations in disease surveillance, equip the next generation of African scientists with cutting edge skills and strengthening south-south research collaborations. We propose the following hypotheses: 1. Increased capacity in genomic epidemiology will enable more effective disease surveillance in Africa. 2. Increased capacity in biobanking and genomics data management and analysis in Africa will enhance regional surveillance of infectious diseases and encourage timely and effective responses to emerging pathogens. 3. Regional whole genome sequence-based surveillance will improve the detection of DR-TB and inform the development of more sensitive and specific rapid diagnostics for the detection and surveillance of DR-TB in Africa and elsewhere. 4. Regional genomic surveillance of malaria parasites will inform a pre-emptive detection of emerging DR parasites and measure the impact of programmatic interventions for a data driven decision making by policy makers. 5. Implementation of harmonized genomic data analysis tools will allow the creation of continent-wide surveillance networks able to identify cross-border spread of DR variants and emerging pathogens. To achieve this, PANGenS will develop genomic epidemiology capacity across Africa by establishing a collaborative framework that brings together all expertise to perform trainings and implementation in all relevant components ranging from wet lab to bioinformatics, and establish proof-of-concept studies for TB and malaria in in selected partner countries