The overall goal of GenPath Africa is to control pathogen infections in Africa. Our consortium of African and European investigators proposes to build on our collective experience in responding to SARS-CoV-2 to better diagnose, monitor and clinically manage current and future epidemics in Africa. We propose to expand genomics capacity to combat drug resistant HIV-1 and TB through precision medicine and by using genomic epidemiology to guide the public health response. GenPath Africa will also apply recent developments in wastewater and one health surveillance to detect emerging pathogens. Capacity development activities will include degree training in South Africa and the transfer of technology to the National Public Health Institute of Mozambique. The consortium’s objectives will be achieved by connecting the specialized genomics facilities of the Africa CDC Pathogen Genomics Initiative (Africa PGI) in South Africa and Kenya with African national public health institutes to translate scientific advances into public health actions. Long-term collaborations with Germany and Belgium will be leveraged to help achieve these objectives and make precision medicine and precision public health a reality in southern and East Africa. The consortium will also contribute to the long-term capacity building objectives of Africa PGI by contributing to harmonising training resources and collaboration with existing networks to ensure that all data are of high quality and available in public databases. GenPath Africa will advance the EDTCP3 work program by: i) providing researchers and public health professionals with skills in genomic epidemiology to better understand infectious disease epidemiology and drug resistance, ii) strengthening capability in southern and East Africa to rapidly respond to current and emerging epidemics, and iii) providing researchers with training to advance their scientific careers in Africa and establish themselves as scientific and public health leaders.

REVALTER project aims at promoting a new vision of livestock development in Vietnam, a country faced with extremely rapid intensification and industrialization of the sector. In order to build some sustainable scenarios for the future, the project will review the past and current changes that affect environmental, economic and social relationships between livestock breeding, agriculture and rural territories. Four specific objectives will be followed: (i) to review the ongoing processes of change related to livestock transformation; (ii) to understand governance mechanisms related to these changes; (iii) to assess and compare sustainable indicators of livestock systems; (iv) to build prospective scenarios in partnership with policy deciders. The project will conduct a systemic approach of livestock-ecosystems relationships, that will be documented at 3 levels (multi-scale analysis): the farm level, the territorial level, and the nation-wide sub-sector level. Field work will focus on 3 selected zones located in the provinces of Dong Nai, Hanoi and Son La. To address the complex questions related to sustainable livestock development in Vietnam, the project will take into account simultaneously the economic, social, and environmental implications of livestock transformations. Four major concepts will be used for that purpose: transition, governance, viability and sustainability. Recognizing that the transition of livestock-based production systems is multidisciplinary in nature, the project will work with a team composed of animal scientists, agricultural systems scientists, geographers, economists and anthropologists. The project will be structured in 5 different work tasks that will contribute jointly to the specific objectives listed above. The project will be conducted by the 5 project partners chosen in accordance to their knowledge and experience on the problem and specifically in Vietnam. Three French partners (CIRAD, INRA and CNRS) will be associated to the relevant International Research Center (ILRI) and with one Vietnamese research institute (RUDEC) specialized in rural development and agricultural policies. The project will provide scientific contribution to the Livestock Policy Monitoring System (LPMS) which is currently being implemented by RUDEC and the Direction of Livestock of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in partnership with CIRAD and INRA.

B3Africa - Bridging Biobanking and Biomedical Research across Europe and Africa will dramatically improve and facilitate the development of better predictive, preventive and personalized healthcare worldwide. The rapidly evolving African biobanks are an invaluable resource: The African population has the greatest genomic diversity on the planet and represents an incredible resource of information to advance biomedical research. B3Africa aims to implement a cooperation platform and technical informatics framework for biobank integration between Africa and Europe. The collaboration harmonizes the ethical and legal framework, biobank data representation and bioinformatics pipelines for sharing data and knowledge among biobanks and allowing access for researchers from both continents. Main actors from the relevant initiatives including Human Heredity and Health in Africa project (H3Africa), European Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources research infrastructure (BBMRI-ERIC) and LMIC Biobank and Cohort Network (BCNet) collaborate in B3Africa to address the following objectives: • Defining an ethical and regulatory framework for biobank data sharing between Europe and Africa • Defining data models for representing biobank and research data based on existing best practices, standards and ontologies • Designing an informatics platform using existing open-source software (with eBioKit and BiBBox as essential modules) integrating workflows for biobank applications • Implementation of an education and training system for information and capacity building • Validating the B3Africa concept with existing biobanks from both continents B3Africa will provide the critical mass to maximise efficiency in biomedical research, supports defragmentation through integration and allows efficient leverage of existing biobanks and e-infrastructures in Europe and Africa. The technical informatics framework will be designed for easy upscaling and integration with other research infrastructures.

The direct dependence of humans on ecosystem services is by far strongest in developing regions where poverty restricts access to resources. This dependency also makes people in developing countries more sensitive to climate change than their developed counterparts. Increasing human populations deteriorates natural habitat, biodiversity and ecosystems services which spiral into poverty and low human welfare. This calls for innovative solutions that encompass the entire socio-ecological-economic system, as recognized on a global scale in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. However, innovative and practical solutions require downscaling to regional levels for identifying concrete sets of drivers of change. For Africa specifically, the interplay of human population growth, land use change, climate change and human well-being is a major challenge. This project focuses on the Serengeti-Maasai Mara Ecosystem and associated agricultural areas, a region in East Africa that encompasses parts of Kenya and Tanzania. The ecosystem is world-famous for key aspects of its biodiversity, such as the migration of 1.3 million wildebeest. This ‘flagship ecosystem’ role will enhance the international interest in the project. In this project, internationally leading researchers from Norway, the Netherlands, Scotland, Denmark and Germany are teaming up with strong local partners in Tanzania and Kenya. The research will be organised in seven interlinked work packages: 1) assemble and integrate the so far separate Kenyan and Tanzanian relevant data on the region; 2) quantify the connections between human population growth, land use change, climate change and biodiversity change; 3) test how biodiversity change leads to changes in key ecosystem services; 4) quantify the dependence of human livelihoods on these ecosystem services. We will implement innovative ways for communication and dissemination of the results of ‘continuous engagement’ by local stakeholders.