Partnering between universities of Geneva and Kinshasa for building and strengthening of capacity John Poté, PhD

Agreement of signature UNIGE-UNIGE Building and strengthening of capacity in developing countries can be considered as one of majors aspects of sustainable development in the world.

Current and expected aspects of collaboration Research, Teaching and Development of Education on the field of Environmental Science mainly for integrated water and natural ressources management. Action for environmental education by communication for students, environmental agents of private and public sectors, advocacy and education in the field. Potentiality to develop the distance learning master degrees as well as massive open online courses between University of Geneva and University of Kinshasa on the different tasks, especially for water, waste management, sanitation and prevention of natural catastrophe (Erosion) Crowdsourcing and Analytical Approaches for Tracking and Generating data Related to the Epidemiology of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria in Developing Countries under Tropical Conditions (Kinshasa, DRC) The assessment of Environmental and Health Impacts of mining effluent waters and proposition of solutions to local authorities and mining operators for elaborating of sustainable remediation strategies

Significant of results The novelty and originality of this collaboration reside in a combination of socio-cultural aspects and other aspects which cause epidemics and environmental impacts of contaminated aquatic ecosystem. The methods and scenarios which will/are developed include the potential strategy for the development of new sustainable water and natural ressource management, mining wastewater treatment and urban food production as well as to prevent the human risks in Sub-Saharan Africa. The challenging water contamination, natural resources management as well as food production have the global consequence. This collaboration is of great interest for regional and global researches regarding the human-aquatic environment interaction. We are expecting and intending more collaboration with United Nation, private and industrial sponsors for continuation of the tasks proposed in this collaboration. For more information, please visit our site: http://www.unige.ch/forel/en/biogeochimie/projets1/collaboration/