Projects

The ongoing climate breakdown and associated ecological, social and-economic crises call for innovative approaches to support the resilience of affected communities. Ethiopia and the Great Horn of Africa region are paradigmatic of conflict-prone and climate change-affected societies that need to improve their buffering capacity towards current and projected stresses. PRISMA employs a transdisciplinary approach to address three crises currently raging in Ethiopia and their nexus: climate, political, and health.

This project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), examines the relationship between elite alignments and regime change in the Middle East and North Africa. Empirically, the project focuses on three MENA countries across more than a century, namely Egypt (1882-present), Tunisia (1907-present), and Turkey/Ottoman Empire (1908-present) and collects systematic individual-level data on political elites in these cases. The project also traces the causal mechanism underlying its core theoretical model through elite surveys, experiments, and in-depth qualitative fieldwork focusing on authoritarian regression in Egypt, democratization and democratic breakdown in Tunisia, and democratic backsliding in Turkey.

The Master in Electoral Policy and Administration is an advanced educational program on electoral processes and electoral administration, offered in partnership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and in cooperation with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and addressed to current or prospective election professionals. Through the projects Innov-Elections and Africa-votes, financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, election administrators and stakeholders from 36 African States have benefitted and are benefitting from the MEPA Programme and strenghtening their relevant knowledge and skills.

The AFRICAMAVAL project supports the development of a sustainable Europe-Africa supply chain in the procurement of critical raw materials. Specifically, it aims to develop an EU-Africa partnership in order to ensure responsible extraction of mineral resources for European industry, while ensuring co-development processes based on compliance with ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria and the long-term development of European and African companies.

FOCUS-AFRICA works in Southern African Development Community (SADC) region to advance science of climate services and producing tailored climate service delivery. It will become a repository for knowledge and tools necessary in the development of practical and useful climate services to better tackle the risks of climate change.

The project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, aims at building the local capacities of the key actors in the justice sector of selected African countries (Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) to address the current and emerging security challenges plaguing the region. The program includes a number of thematic on-site courses, particularly in the fields of counter-terrorism, the fight against organized crime, cybersecurity and the protection of personal data, the fight against human trafficking, the protection of victims and witnesses, and international judicial cooperation.

Aim of the project is planning and delivering training courses for gynecological residents and nurses on a safe delivery management. Smart simulators will be designed to be compliant with the African resources and brought to hospitals to set up training courses to improve local maternal and neonatal care.

LEAP-RE is a joint project of the European Union and the African Union to promote renewable energy sources through support for technological development and the identification and preparation of management and engagement strategies for consumers and citizens. Specifically, the project is aimed at creating a long-term partnership between stakeholders identified on the basis of the “quadruple helix” model, and aims at aligning the bilateral and multilateral agreements already adopted, reducing the fragmentation of the framework. To this end, it jointly promotes and implements research, innovation and capacity-building activities responding to the Multi-Annual Roadmap (MAR) implemented within the previous PRE-LEAP-RE project. Within LEAP-RE, SSSA’s team is involved in two WPs: Geothermal Atlas for Africa and Geothermal Village. In both the projects, SSSA is responsible for social scientists’ activities.

The overarching objective of PREVEX is, therefore, to put forward more fine-tuned and effective approaches to preventing violent extremism, through strengthening societal resilience. Focusing on the broader MENA region, context-sensitive, in-depth case studies of the occurrence and non-occurrence of violent extremism will be carried out and brought together in a regional comparison. Particular emphasis will be placed on how to strengthen resilience through investigating non-occurrence of violent extremism in ‘enabling environments’.

The aim of EEIST is to use cutting edge advanced methods, which exist in the sciences of complexity and economics, to support government decision making around facilitating a rapid low-carbon transition. By engaging with policy-makers in large emerging, advaced and developing economies, this project will contribute to the economic development of emerging nations and support sustainable development globally.

This project utilizes a participatory breeding approach that involves geneticist and climate scientists who will work together to select a group of local rice varieties with promising agronomic and genotypic adaptation to the climate crisis. These local varieties will then be directly evaluated by the farmers through an intense participatory selection process.

TALISMAN – funded by the Italian Minstry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation – aims to contribute developing knowledge-driven and integrated strategies to enhance resilience to climatic stressors in the Sahel region, focusing on Niger. The project utlizes a comparative approch, which will take advantage of kwoledge and methods developed in Mozambique, within the framework of FOCUS-Africa. By engaging local universities, research institutions, and international agencies rooted in both countries, the project will deliver research, education and capacity building activities, in tight connection with the Italian NGO ASeS.

The main objectives of the project are: 1) to consolidate and improve the Performance Evaluation System developed and implemented starting from 2019 in the hospitals and districts supported by Doctors with Africa CUAMM in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, 2) to implement in the reference contexts a data return web platform, based on the principle of interoperability of micro-services, and 3) to carry out training activities aimed at local professionals for the construction of solid managerial skills.

The project aims at exploring the role and potential of traditional authorities with respect to local, national and regional dynamics of violent conflict and peace.
It also aims at analyzing how traditional authorities can promote mediation initiatives based on interreligious collaboration aimed at fostering social cohesion, community resilience and peace.

The project combines science and innovation to improve photosynthesis for higher yielding crops. It focuses on maize, tomato and barley and uses different approaches to understand physiological and molecular mechanisms to improve photosynthetic efficiency.

The course, financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, aims to improve the participants’ theoretical and methodological skills regarding the protection of personal data and cyber-security, as well as to provide an understanding of good practices in these fields.

This course – financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation – is aimed at improving the participants’ theoretical and methodological skills in dealing with international and domestic terrorism, and at providing an overview of good practices in this field.

This capacity-building mission, financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, relies on the long-standing experience of two Italian experts of investigation activities related to the crime of terrorism – i.e., a former public prosecutor and a lieutenant colonel of the Arma dei Carabinieri, who discuss key challenges with the anti-terrorism unit recently established in Niger.

This course – financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation – aims at improving the participants’ theoretical and methodological skills in the project management cycle, including project conception, management, budgeting, reporting, monitoring and evaluation.

These courses – financed by EUCTI – are aimed at strengthening the teaching and methodological skills of international mission members in the design and delivery of training courses in order to build local capacity in relevant areas as well as to offer mission members the opportunity to develop their individual skills.

The aim of the course – financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation – is to improve the participants’ theoretical and methodological skills in the field of international judicial cooperation, and to provide them with an understanding of good practices through the analysis of specific case studies concerning terrorism, trafficking in persons, transnational organised crime.

The project – financed by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation – aims, through research and targeted capacity building trainings, to contribute to the development and consolidation of the stabilization and peace processes of the target communities by ensuring a continuous policy dialogue and a systematic support to local and intermediate institutions. More specifically, the training courses are aimed at providing community leaders and civil society representatives with key knowledge and tools of conflict resolution and peacebuilding; and at providing judges, prosecutors, lawyers and other relevant stakeholders with key knowledge and tools to promote human rights and the rule of law in their respective communities.

This project, funded by the Italian Minstry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, was develop to identify a collection of local varieties of a stratecic crop species for samllholer farmers in Niger. The project aimed at providing training courses and meet with Nigerien Institutions and Universities to establish a network for research, innovation and exchange.

The project investigates how changes and breakdowns in neopatrimonial rules and networks in the Sahel have eroded state capacity, particularly in peripheral areas. These changes have opened up new spaces through which insurgents can seek local integration, via the establishment of various types of violent order. These violent entrepreneurs are armed actors possessing some degree of political agenda, which is acted out in tandem with different types of income-generating activities. They rule by force and violence, but they also distribute resources, provide some order, and offer protection for populations under their control. This project investigates the forms of authority that underpin, enable, and extend violent entrepreneurs’ rule, and how different populations adapt.