WESA: Water and Energy Security for Africa

Keywords

Water, Energy, Agriculture, Climate change, Nexus, PAUWES

Countries

Africa

Summary

The Pan African University - Institute of Water and Energy Sciences, including climate change (PAUWES) in Tlemcen / Algeria is supported by the German government as lead thematic partner in the form of various ways and projects. So far, only projects in the field of institutional development and training have been carried out at the Master's level. The WESA project represents a first step towards the establishment and implementation of a research agenda for PAUWES, as well as offering the first graduates of the Master's courses in the fields of water and energy (including climate change), the opportunity to study at a PhD. WESA involves eight PhD projects.

The overall objectives are as follows:
(1) The implementation of the PAUWES research agenda through the development of research activities and capacities at PAUWES, along with the main priorities of the research activities;
(2) To provide an attractive perspective through a wider range of services and the provision of doctorates for graduates of the first cohort of the PAUWES MSc programs within PAUWES, the UoT or, depending on the given topic, with other PAU institutes or external partners in Africa;
(3) Establishment of PAUWES as a hub for a Pan-African research network (and beyond) through its central contribution to the development of a "Reach-Out" program; and
(4) Strengthening the partnership between PAUWES and UoT as the host institution.

Methodology

The WESA project consists of 5 work packages (WP). ZEF contribution is to provide (1) strong support on conceptual flow of PhD research (considering water topics including climate change, energy and food nexus); (2) synthesis of project results and methods towards the overarching pre-motivation; (3) utilizing the project results / experiences / cooperation with regard to the strengthening of PAUWES / UoT and the contributions to the Reach-Out program results.

Main Cooperation Partners

• Pan African University - Institute of Water and Energy Sciences, including climate change (PAUWES), Tlemcen, Algeria
• Abou Bakr Belkaid University of Tlemcen (UoT), Algeria
• Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany
• Technische Hochschule Köln, Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics (ITT), Cologne, Germany
• United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), Bonn, Germany

Main Funding Partners

German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Publications

Bougara, H., Hamed, K.B., Borgemeister, C., Tischbein, B., Kumar, N.  2020.  Analyzing Trend and Variability of Rainfall in The Tafna Basin (Northwestern Algeria).  Atmosphere, 11(4) : 347. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11040347

Yimer, S.M., N. Kumar, A. Bouanani, B. Tischbein and C. Borgemeister. 2020.  Homogenization of daily time series climatological data in the Eastern Nile basin, Ethiopia. Theoretical and Applied Climatology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03407-w

Duration of the Project

01.11.2016 – 30.06.2021