CEMAC (Communauté Economique et Monétaire de l’Afrique Centrale) countries, have a considerable potential in the agro-food sector, but the structures of their agriculture are still generally based on small family-based farms that cannot ensure the responsiveness to present and future demographic pressures. it is therefore necessary to upgrade all farming inputs, the infrastructures for the treatment of animal foods, and above all the human resources responsible for animal health and for the sanitary control schemes.

Since a project alone cannot solve all those problems at once, LIVE focuses specifically on one of them: the lack of qualified human resources.

LIVE aims at enhancing the capacities of CEMAC countries in implementing and managing higher education systems in the strategic fields of veterinary sciences, animal health, animal production and food safety.

What does the project do?

Establishment/restructuring of Faculties/degree courses.

The first activities focus on the educational structures, meaning academic course organisation and related facilities, in beneficiary countries.

As those structures have to be updated, restructured, re-created, the project first re-examines in a comprehensive manner, the present asset of university higher education, post-graduate training (including Ph.D.), vocational training, in the specific field of veterinary medicine, animal production and food safety in the CEMAC interested countries.

This activity will be carried out thanks to the creation of a database allowing the gathering off all data concerning CEMAC Universities, this database will be an important data source in the field of zoo technology and veterinary medicine in the CEMAC area. This database could be both a tool and a best practice model that could be useful also in other countries.

Establishment of the didactic curricula:

Partners will focus on the contents of the new educational scheme: the degree courses:programmes, curricula, evaluation schemes have to be defined exploiting the best available practices. Curricula are planned following the European guidelines. Since the degree in Veterinary medicine has to be entirely established, a five years profile will be proposed, taking into account the most updated criteria regarding the qualitative/quantitative European requirements. The intention is to ensure a homogeneous study career frame for both CEMAC and European countries.Moreover, existing Animal Science production andtransformation curricula will be revised and improved, an aquaculture curricula will be introduced in some courses.

Planning and management of post-graduate training systems:

This activity deals with the strategic issue of graduate updating and specialisation.

In the specific sector of animal medicine, advanced education and continuous learning are essential to face the challenges of mass safety consumes, sustainable productions and health human conditions.

Since that specific education is missing, this activity has to identify the thematic areas with greatest gaps and propose a series of training responses for the various target categories.Concerning training responses, a great effort will be made in the creation of a Master course in ““Food safety of animal products. All programs will be assessed by LIVE partners and proposed to relevant ministries for their inclusion in the professional careers of involved officers.

Setting of a Network between Universities and similar Higher Education:

High performances in modern education systems come not only from internal assets (organisation systems, infrastructures and human resources) but also from their inclusion in networks of excellence.

This corresponds to the need of exploiting existing skills in various countries, emphasizing specificities while encouraging exchanges of experiences, knowledge, human resources, students, information, educational initiatives and research outcomes. LIVE wants to reproduce the successful experiences among its partners. The creation of a network will be improved also through a website that will illustrate all project's activities. LIVE Project web site will allow also the sharing of experiences between students and professors that may be interested in the project minutes of the project meetings, reports of project activities, and other project information will be published on the website, all the information will be used for didactic purposes and will give access to the project's database.

L.I.V.E EXPECTED IMPACT ON CEMAC COUNTRIES

The most important impact of the project is indeed the creation of a network among permanent and operational structures dealing with veterinary medicine, animal productions and food safety in the region of Central Africa. This will lead to the creation of synergies, savings in resources and multiplications of results, improved university activities and post-university careers.

Because of that the network becomes really operational and not purely formal and a common methodological choice is made. Instead of basing its creation on declarations of intents, cooperation protocols or written agreements, partners will build it up on operational activities. The training of the trainers, the common database, the project dissemination activities are thus funding elements of a cooperation that naturally leads to a networking way of working.

The network will allow the prosecution of LIVE activities after the end of the project in a sustainable way.