Yesterday, on May 16, the partners of NetCDA met to jointly and officially kick-off their project. The NetCDA team at the University of Würzburg invited all partners to join the hybrid meeting either virtually or in person in Würzburg. Dr. Röhrig from the German Aerospace Center (Projektträger) and Prof. Koné, Capacity Building Director at the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), also joined the meeting and gave supporting welcome notes.
Besides the interesting presentations of the partners, the kick-off meeting gave us room to discuss the strengthening of the German – West African collaboration for a better supervision of students and the initiation of a European-African network for climate change researchers interested in capacity development in Africa – some important goals of NetCDA.
Already a day before the kick-off meeting, several partners joined Dr. Michael Thiel and Alexandra Bell in Würzburg to envision pathways forward for a stronger collaboration among German and West African partners. These discussions will serve as a basis for the development of guidelines for a sustainable and long-lasting partnership.
After these inspiring last two days, we are all very excited about the upcoming project year.