ARUA-CD: Building African Capacity for Climate and Development Challenges

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The ARUA Centre of Excellence in Climate and Development (ARUA-CD) tackles the triple challenge of enabling development that is equitable, resilient to existing and expected climate risks and impacts, and is low in carbon emissions such that African contributions to global warming is reduced. Essentially, ARUA-CD is a strategic, collaborative pan-African response to the climate and development challenges of the continent and the urgent knowledge and capacity needs required to address these. The community of professionals and researchers working on the complex interrelationships between climate change and development is relatively small throughout Africa. Greater expertise is needed to: (i) understand the climate and development challenges threatening the continent's current and future well-being; (ii) co-produce knowledge with society on how to respond to these new risks and challenges, and (iii) co-design, evaluate and sustain context-specific and culturally appropriate innovations and solutions that cut across the SDGs. African-led, engaged transdisciplinary research that spans local, national and transnational scales can help do this by providing the evidence and impetus required for effective climate change policies, strategies and actions that support societal innovation and adaptation to a new and uncertain future.The ARUA-CD consists of three core partners; the University of Cape Town (the African Climate and Development Initiative is the CoE Secretariat and Southern African regional hub), the University of Ghana (the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies is the West African regional hub, and the University of Nairobi (the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation is the East African regional hub). Each of these CoE members have extensive existing capacity, local and international networks and research and student teaching experience in climate change and development, which provides opportunities for synergy and interaction and a foundation on which to build. Each of the regional hubs reach out to other ARUA and non-ARUA universities in their region following a 'hub and spoke' model, with the Centre as a whole bringing these groups together in a pan-African community of practice. Through this, we envisage the ARUA-CD as a leader and source of inspiration for transformative solutions to the challenges of climate change and development in Africa. The activities described in this proposal all contribute to the core focus of the ARUA-CD, that is, building African capacity for climate and development challenges. Through successful implementation of these activities, this project aims to build capacity in Africa for comparative, engaged and transformative research that enhances decision-making; policy processes and science for impact, towards the goal of an equitable and climate resilient future. These activities build towards supporting capable and skilled African scholars and professionals in confronting the status quo and pursuing state-of-the-art solutions to the complex challenges posed by climate change in Africa. In the vision of improved training and capacity building, we hope to amplify and strengthen African voices in both regional and global platforms. The successful execution of this programme requires efforts in developing open and constructive partnerships with experts, decision-makers, practitioners and with well-targeted communities in order to identify research gaps, co-design projects, co-create knowledge and apply context-appropriate solutions. The activities are designed with the end goal of building a robust and inclusive network of higher education institutions and other partners working on climate change problems and solutions across Africa.