Most AUDA-NEPAD Water CoEs were prepresed at the recent ArcX engagements in West and Southern Africa. The first meeting took place in Lomé, Togo from 22-24 June 2026, while the Southern Africa engagement was convened in Johannesburg, South Africa from 7-9 July 2026.
The Africa Regional Centres of Excellence (ArcX) programme (2023 -2030) aims at strengthening collaboration between African and European institutions, fostering inclusive green growth and innovation and capacity, as well as supporting Africa’s transformative agenda. The ArcX programme is financed by the EU through the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) through the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe (NDICI-GE) in line with the EU’s Global Gateway strategy . It is part of the broader AU–EU Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Partnership.
ArcX helps position Africa as a key player in the global green transition. It currently supports 51 African Centres of Excellence in 22 African countries, together with 11 partner organisations in Europe. Regional Centres of Excellence (RCoEs) supports these centres by acting as hubs of innovation. They work in five thematic areas (Agroecology, Biodiversity & Forests, Water, Ocean, and Climate Change resilience) and one cross-cutting component.
The Africa Regional Centres of Excellence (ArcX) programme, Technical Assistant team hosted the West Africa Regional Workshop in Lomé at the Hotel duex Frivrier, from 22 to 24 June 2026, under the theme “Interactions between Urban and Rural Environments and Ecosystem Sustainability in West Africa.” Convened within the framework of the ArcX programme and supported by the European Union, the three-day gathering brought together regional centres of excellence, policymakers, research institutions and private-sector actors to build a shared vision for managing the continent’s urban–rural interface and strengthening cross-sector cooperation.
The Southern African Network for Water, Centers of Excellence (SANWATCE) Secretariat was represented at the workshop, and the broader ACEWATER community was strongly present: all five of our partner institutions in the West Africa region took part, ensuring the network’s research and implementation experience was reflected throughout the proceedings. Their participation across the plenary and working sessions ensured that the perspectives of the region’s water and environmental research community were woven into every theme of the workshop.
The workshop opened with framing remarks from the ArcX Technical Assistance team, followed by an opening session featuring the EU Delegation to Togo and Togo’s Ministry of Environment, Forest Resources, Coastal Protection and Climate Change, led by Minister Komla Dodzi Kokoroko. In a welcoming that set a collaborative tone for the days to follow, the Ministry underscored the value of partnership encouraging closer cooperation among ArcX partners and between national and regional authorities as the foundation for tackling shared environmental challenges. The message resonated with the workshop’s central premise: that the region’s most pressing challenges cross both borders and sectors, and so too must the responses.
As a start the workshop commenced by building a common understanding of the ArcX ecosystem in West Africa, with an overview of stakeholders’ activities from partners including CIFOR-ICRAF, CORAF, CSE, ECMWF, FARA/RUFORUM, Mercator Ocean International and UCAD.
A highlight of the day was the keynote panel on the urban–rural interface, anchored by Dr Mathias Spaliviero of UN-Habitat, who framed urbanisation as a territorial development process requiring a multi-scaled, integrated approach; drawing on the case of the Sahel. His keynote was complemented by interventions on the bio-economy and natural capital, institutional fragmentation in natural-resource management, land and water management for sustainable food systems, and the multisectoral challenges of food security and population growth in West Africa. Together, the panel made a compelling case for treating urban and rural systems as interconnected rather than separate domains.
The second day turned to translating knowledge into co-designed, operational frameworks. Sessions on transformative private-sector and start-up solutions showcased innovative experiences from model farms in West Africa to approaches for turning research results into economic opportunities for young people highlighting the growing role of innovation and enterprise in the region’s development. A central thread of the day was scientific dissemination and data sharing. In parallel working groups, partners explored the Africa Knowledge Platform (AKP) as a mechanism for knowledge sharing and platform interoperability for multisectoral co-creation through ArcX, alongside multisectoral data integration and regional co-production mechanisms for decision support. These discussions spoke directly to the practical questions of how partners share data, integrate evidence across sectors, and build the digital infrastructure to support regional decision-making. The day concluded with a session on communicating across sectors and audiences, led by FARA and RUFORUM, focused on translating technical data into messages relevant to public policy. This emphasis on the science–policy–practice nexus and the science-communication skills needed to bridge it; underscored that even the strongest evidence must be tailored for decision-makers if it is to shape policy and practice.
The final day framed innovation as a driver of sustainable investment and partnerships. Parallel working groups examined options for promoting investment in services to address urban–rural challenges, and for harnessing the demographic dividend through youth, start-ups and business incubators reinforcing the workshop’s focus on stakeholder engagement and private-sector participation as essential to scaling solutions. The workshop closed with a plenary on identifying cross-sectoral activities to be taken forward within and beyond the ArcX framework, and on regional and continental integration setting a clear agenda for continued collaboration.
