An IDEGA team, coordinated by Professors Rubén C. Lois and Rosa Verdugo, participated in the international academic event organized by the University of Cape Verde (Uni-CV) within the framework of the European Union’s Africa MOVES project. This project, funded with over €1.2 million, aims to implement an intra-African mobility scheme with seven sub-Saharan higher education institutions: the University of Law and Humanities in Bamako (Mali), the University of Cape Verde, the UAM University in Niger, the University of São Tomé and Príncipe, the Assane Seck University in Ziguinchor (Senegal), and Punguè University in Mozambique.
At this international seminar held in Praia (Santiago, Cape Verde) from June 2nd to 5th, the IDEGA team introduced and presented various management tools to sub-Saharan universities for developing postgraduate academic instruments and for the successful implementation of collaborative projects within the framework of 66 mobility programs over three years. In total, eight undergraduate exchanges, 18 master’s degree stays, 20 doctoral residencies, and 20 administrative staff mobility programs will take place among the seven African countries that comprise the consortium.
The University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), through its Institute for European and African Studies (IDEGA), is assuming the role of providing European external and technical assistance in Africa. This will give African states the opportunity to learn firsthand about the university policies developed since the Bologna Declaration for the design of their own postgraduate accreditation systems. The aim is to facilitate an international framework for the recognition and equivalence of qualifications within the African Union, thereby enabling the international recognition of specialist training programs in Africa. The first exchange experiences will take place in October 2026.
The EU’s Directorate-General for Cooperation’s MOBAF program has allocated over €500 million to direct action initiatives in Africa for the period 2025-2027. These initiatives aim to advance new avenues of collaboration in environmental recovery, climate change, territorial analysis, clean technologies, the digital and environmental transition, and open democracy and sustainability, through the European Commission and Council’s Global Gateway Fund.
Africa MOVES is the first EU project to incorporate universities from the Sahel in actions directly related to transport, cleantech, clean energy or urban sociology, and is characterized by integrating aspects of entrepreneurial culture directly into the projects of Master’s and PhD students through the tangible protection and licensing of the results of these investigations.
