Project Overview

In the context of accelerated climate change, the Sub-Saharan African countries of Malawi and Zambia are increasingly susceptible to the impact of droughts, cyclones and other weather events.

The SEED project builds the capacities of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Malawi and Zambia to work with a range of community, local enterprise and local government partners in innovative learning partnerships that will co-develop courses that are responsive to the local climatic conditions and aim to build more sustainable and resilient local economies.

These courses use transformative community development and professional learning based in real-world learning methods to enable deep collaboration between HEI, community and local enterprise partners.

SEED builds the capacity of HEIs to train professional education, development and local government staff in short, highly responsive microcredential courses that can be used in their daily work in local communities, development and local enterprise to enhance resilience and productivity in a climate-sensitive manner based on local analysis.

Who We Are

SEED is a global partnership of HEIs, civil society, local government and community members working across disciplines of adult education, climate change, enterprise and agriculture sciences to support capacity-building amongst HEIs to support transformative community development and sustainable enterprise in the context of global climate change and food insecurity. Partners are from Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Malawi and Zambia, with a growing number of associate partners.

Specific Objectives

Specific Objective 1

Build and reinforce the capacity of HEIs to carry out locally-specific research on climate change impact and develop training & engagement models to be integrated into HEI programmes including Continuous Professional Development (CPD)

Specific Objective 2

Support HEI capacity in the development of more sustainable local enterprise and value-added markets in regional communities through research & CPD programmes

Specific Objective 3

Enhance HEI capacity to develop university-community-policy engagements and communications across their region and the wider network

Specific Objective 4

Develop sustainable and accessible teaching and training curricula based on microcredentials for HEIs and communities, in traditional delivery, blended and fully online

Methodology

The SEED partnership of European and African partners will exchange knowledge, capacity building and good practice to co-design and trial two microcredential courses on community-based responses to climate change and building sustainable local enterprise in response to changing climatic conditions.

We use transformative community development and professional learning based in real-world learning methods to enable deep collaboration between HEI researchers, community and local enterprise partners.

These methods are based in adult education approaches which facilitate collaboration and dialogue between partners to understand each other worlds in co-developing these microcredential courses.

Our starting point acknowledges that the smallholder farming and local entrepreneurs in Malawi and Zambia who are the most vulnerable to climate change must be active players in defining their own needs and exerting influence on the education systems, ways of knowing and policy decisions about their futures.

Geographic Focus (Malawi & Zambia)

The accelerated scale of climate change means that that rural populations of Sub-Saharan African countries of Malawi and Zambia are very susceptible to the impact of droughts, cyclones and other weather events.

The Malawian ecоnоmy is largely dependent оn rain-fed agriculture, it is vulnerable tо external shоcks – particularly climatic and weather-related shоcks. Fооd insecurity is identified as the greatest need tо be addressed for Zambia, driven by drоught, erratic rain and flооding.

Higher Education Institutions in Malawi and Zambia hоld extensive knоwledge and research capacity abоut climate change impacts but оften struggle tо translate this in ways that are respоnsive and useful fоr the needs оf lоcal prоducers, small enterprises and markets.

The Zambia Natiоnal Pоlicy оn Climate Change (2021) recognised that “vulnerable grоups tend tо be under-represented in decisiоn making оn climate change, which in turn severely limits their ability tо cоntribute, implement and apply their expertise”.

There is a clear need tо intervene in building and strengthening the capacity оf HEIs tо respоnd tо the ever-changing needs оf sоcial and ecоnоmic actоrs tо respоnd purpоsefully tо climate change related shоcks which SEED seeks tо address.