This workpackage was designed to ensure a proper management of the project and a good task performance with high quality. For this purpose, a management board was created including representatives from each partner institution to work together for an optimal progression of the project.

This WP aims to map the experience, needs and priorities in terms of studies, research and projects related to the environmental health and human biomonitoring in the different African countries. The result of this research investigation comes out in a state of the Art report which thoroughly demonstrates the educational and research needs of the African universities in the fields of interest. This WP contributes to draw national directives and guidelines, adapted to the context of each African country, that will focus on the identification of key competencies and skills related to biomonitoring and environmental health research methodologies. This will allow to build evidence-based pedagogy and working needs-oriented research that will constitute the foundation of the BioNet training and research program.

Promoting environmental health education in African universities and highlighting the environmental health problems and risks faced by the African population will be an important aspect covered by the Work Package 3 (WP3) of the BioNet project. Led by the Laboratoire National de Santé (LNS), WP3 will focus on developing materials and capacity-building programs for teachers and trainers involved in the BioNet project. In collaboration with the University of Luxembourg (UL), the LNS is developing an online e-learning platform (available in in English, and French), which consists of massive learning on areas of interest (divided into five modules) that will benefit a large number of students and healthcare professionals, both in Europe and Africa. In particular, health professionals who have completed the online training in the African partner countries, which will potentially be able to recruit workers in different occupational settings to conduct a sentinel survey on the assessment of occupational exposure to hazardous chemicals, under the supervision of the project’s African partner universities.

The objective of this workpackage is to set up a sentinel surveillance network of occupational and health stakeholders in the African countries, partners of the project namely Benin, Ethiopia and Morocco. By conducting a pilot study, an evaluation of the exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals will take place on workers in occupational settings, and this will contribute to knowledge and insights generation on Environmental health and exposure in Africa.

The objective of BioNet workpackage 5 is to connect European and African academics and health professionals specialized in environmental health and sharing national and internal experience and expertise. WP5 is responsible for communication and dissemination of all materials, results, guidelines, news, meeting announcements, etc. through the website. Additionally, WP5 will organize the first Euro-African Academic Conference on sentinel systems and environmental health at the end of the project period in Morocco at project end, were the results of the collaborative work established between European and African health institutions will be presented. This will include plenary lectures by experts, workshops for trainees, and oral abstract and posters presentations. Lastly, WP5 will set up awareness campaigns (1 campaign in each African partner country).