The UNESCO Initiative for Earth Sciences Education in Africa aims to support the development of the next generation of earth scientists in Africa. The principal objectives of this initiative are to carry out an assessment on the current status of earth sciences education, give examples of outreach and training initiatives, formalise problems of earth sciences education and solutions to improve the situation.

Late 2009 and early 2010, five workshops were organised (Egypt, Angola, South Africa, Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo) to encompass the African continent. More than 150 delegates, including senior experts, professors, government officials, researchers, industrials and young students, all of them involved in the field of geosciences and representing 37 countries, had the opportunity to share their views on
these objectives. An oral presentation of the AEGOS project was made in Cape Town by Cindy Petersen from the Council for Geoscience-South Africa, in Dakar by Ousmane Cissé from the Ministère des Mines, de
l’Industrie et des PME-Senegal and in Kinshasa by Max Fernandez, Royal Museum of Central Africa-Belgium.

In Cape Town, an overview of the project and dissemination of information focused on work package 6 “Capacity Building and Training Programmes” was presented. During the Kinshasa meeting, the participants
underlined that international networking is poor in Central Africa. No country from Central Africa takes part to AEGOS project for example. In this respect, it was important to present which opportunities the AEGOS project can offer and how the integration to such a consortium can lead to a better valorisation of their geo-data.

In Dakar, AEGOS was presented as an example of programme of international networking action to improve the capacity building. As a result, the visibility of AEGOS has been widely increased among the representatives from geological surveys, industry and universities participating to these workshops.

More information:
www.earth-science-education-initiative-africa.org
Contact: S. Gaines (UNESCO)
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