Joram Tarusarira and team receive an Erasmus+ grant of nearly €700,000 for the Cherish Africa research project

Dr Joram Tarusarira, Associate Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society, and colleagues from European and Sub-Saharan African universities have received an Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education (CBHE) grant for their project CHERISH Africa. CHERISH Africa is  a multi-partner international project involving higher education institutions and non-academic  partners from Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. It aims to strengthen the capacity of higher education institutions in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe by integrating green entrepreneurial competencies into curricula and professional development programs. Through this, CHERISH Africa aims to enable these institutions to act as catalysts for values- and competence-based climate action, regional cooperation, mutual learning, system-level innovation, and knowledge sharing. We asked Dr Tarusarira, the Coordinator, more about this interesting project! 

Why did you decide to apply for an Erasmus+ project?

After several years of research I observed an operational disconnect rooted in a lack of climate knowledge among societal stakeholders in East and Southern Africa whose involvement is necessary to achieve climate goals. This disconnect leads to maladaptation and climate-related peace and security risks. It also suggested to me that climate knowledge should not be restricted to those directly in food, land, and water systems, but that socio-cultural, economic and political actors also require climate knowledge competencies. 

What are you most looking forward to?

I am looking forward to the activities the partners and I will conduct and to the flow and sharing of climate knowledge from different perspectives, including academic, government, non-governmental, and labor market actors. It will be an honor to help build this transformational vehicle for climate action in the region. Most of all, this project will help shift the paradigm about who should sit at the climate discussion tables. 

When would the project be successful in your eyes?

The project will have succeeded once policymakers, practitioners and higher education institutions recognise that the impacts of climate crises are reflected not only in food and water insecurity, but also in identity, behaviour, and peace and conflict outcomes, and therefore that climate knowledge must be integrated across disciplines. Another strong indicator of success would also be seeing partner higher education institutions embed values-based climate and green entrepreneurial competencies into their curricula as a lasting institutional practice, not a project-limited pilot, and seeing these institutions continue and fund these activities on their own once the project ends. Finally, the strengthening and broadening of the partnerships created through this project, and the strengthening of internationalization at the University of Groningen, will be indicators of success.

About Joram Tarusarira

Dr Joram Tarusarira is an Associate Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on religion, conflict, peacebuilding, and the role of the sacred in climate-related security risks, with empirical grounding in fieldwork across Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 

Consortium

● University of Groningen, The Netherlands, (Coordinator)
● Tübingen University, Germany
● Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kenya,
● University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
● University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe
● Mashariki Research and Policy Centre, Kenya,
● Commission for University Education, Kenya