Building a Long-Term Africa Union (AU) and European Union (EU) Research and Innovation joint collaboration on Sustainable Renewable Energies

Expected Outcome:The EU intends to play an increasingly leading role in global and multilateral initiatives. The EU is developing further the AU-EU Research and Innovation Partnership on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy, emanating from the AU-EU High-level Policy Dialogue (‘Africa initiative’), to implement the AU-EU Innovation Agenda[1] adopted in July 2023. The Green Deal underlines that “Renewable energy and energy efficiency, for example for clean cooking, are key to closing the energy access gap in Africa while delivering the required reduction in CO2”.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• R&I communities of researchers, industries, funding organisations and policy makers will count on a lasting AU-EU sustainable R&I partnership framework to implement joint R&I programmes of activities;
• Researchers, industry, public authorities, and citizens have access to increased knowledge, assessment methods, tools and expertise network;
• The joint AU-EU Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Collaborative Partnership and EU Science Diplomacy in Africa will be strengthened.

Scope:The proposal will build on the achievements made under the project LEAP-RE to strengthen and establish a sustainable collaboration framework. The proposal will expand and provide support to the established community of researchers, industries, innovators and funding organisations involved in the partnership, and seek to create links to other relevant R&I communities. Activities will contribute to human and institutional capacity-building and turn the AU-EU Research and Innovation Partnership on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy into a long-term platform for collaboration.

The activities to be covered are:

• Support the implementation of the AU-EU Innovation Agenda priority on Green Transition and the Global Gateway in Sub-Saharan Africa to increase investments in energy access;
• Analyse the impact of relevant EU-Africa research and innovation projects funded by the EU in the sustainable energy domain;
• Accelerate the translation of innovation into real-life outputs;
• Engagement of local communities across the African continent, in view of facilitating co-design, hybridisation and accelerated adoption of innovation; social sciences and humanities – including gender studies – is expected to play a key role;
• Develop human and institutional capacities on innovative sustainable energy through the creation of a sustainable network of experts and of science-based policymaking knowledge in synergy with existing activities of other AU and EU initiatives;
• Implement and push further clustering activities with all relevant on-going EU, national and regional funded projects, to enable stronger cross-projects co-operation, consultations and joint activities on cross-cutting issues;
• Provide support to the AU-EU Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Partnership of the AU-EU High Level Policy Dialogue on Science, Technology and Innovation, and other AU-EU policy agendas;
• Update strategic and joint research and innovation action roadmaps, implemented and defined in the project LEAP-RE (www.leap-re.eu) to the new ambitions for 2030 and 2050.

Proposals are to provide a long-term perspective and vision on how the AU-EU Research and Innovation joint collaboration on Sustainable Renewable Energies will be supported both financially and structurally, after the end of the project. Proposals should include activities to further develop this long-term perspective and vision, and how to implement it. Synergy and complementarity with projects selected under topics HORIZON-CL5-2024-D3-01-09: Africa-EU CO-FUND action and HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-07: Implementing the climate action pillar of the EU-African Union Partnership on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy will need to be ensured.

[1] One of the flagship initiatives of the Global Gateway, which will in particular support the implementation of short-, mid- and long-term actions in the area of green transition related to climate change.