InfPrev4frica project aims to capacitate Nursing HEIs from SSA, to facilitate the development nursing students competences in healthcare-associated infections prevention and control, in response to the need to improve the quality of healthcare in this area, increasing its safety and effectiveness, one of the world-wide health priorities that gains special importance in this African region. Intervening on education process of the future professionals simultaneously strengthening the link between the academy and present professionals, this project proposes to improve the quality of HE in SSA, enhancing its relevance for the labor market and society, in line with their competences and skills level and potential. To this, an innovative nursing curricula, focused on infection prevention and control, innovating in contents selection and approach, learning objectives and on the improvement of partner's teaching/learning pedagogical methods/tools, will allow the development of high level thinking competences, arising nursing students’ innovative and entrepreneurial spirit. Aligned with the undeniable fact that education of health professionals’ design involves the accordance with the health needs of the society where care is provided, the main outcome of this project is an innovative pedagogical model that formally addresses this scopus in SSA cultural and healthcare reality, as for patient safety to result in safe practice and improved patient outcomes, it has to be meaningful to the students. To achieve this Model, along with innovative methods and tools, namely in simulation-based learning, the project main activities are the design, piloting, evaluating and implementing the InfPrev4frica Model and Simulation Scenarios, resulting in InfPrev4frica E-book. Up to 70 nursing professors, 200 nurses/healthcare stakeholders and 1200 nursing students will be introduce into this new pedagogical conceptions, that will continue to be disseminated by InovSafeCare Community in SSA.

The overall objective of the project is to contribute towards increased capacity of higher education to support and scale digital transformation in Eastern Africa, with the aim to ensure rehabilitation services for all. An estimated 2.4 billion people globally are currently living with health conditions that benefit from rehabilitation. The digital transformation provides an opportunity to have more accessible and personalized model and system of rehabilitation in Eastern Africa. Project specific objectives are: 1) Strengthened role of higher education in the promotion of rehabilitation in the society, including innovation and business ecosystems, 2) Enhanced pedagogical opportunities and increased quality of education in Eastern Africa in digital rehabilitation for the social, health and education sectors. Project reaches the objectives through capacity building and development between the higher education and the working life, promoting on-going cooperation between the project programme and partner countries. Project answers to the need to strategically leverage digital tools, technologies, and services in rehabilitation through educational development. Primary target groups of the project include teachers and professionals, students, and the working life. Other target groups include various professionals in social and health care, the business sector, rehabilitation clients, and the society at large. Persons benefitting directly from the project include 950 persons. Through project activities, the outputs to be established are Eastern Africa digital rehabilitation Innovation Community (IC), enhancing the pedagogical competence/skills and increased knowledge of teachers and students related to digital rehabilitation, renewing partner institutions’ curricula on multidisciplinary digital rehabilitation for working life and increasing the awareness and understanding of digital rehabilitation among key stakeholders in Eastern Africa.

Africa is endowed with a huge proportion of natural resources, including many dynamic young people who find themselves un- or underemployed, no matter what degree of education they have undergone. Higher education institutions (HEI) in the continent faces challenges such as, weak links to the wider socio-economic context, textbook based curricula that do not address the local socio-economic problems and needs and outdated pedagogical methods of delivery.This project is designed to reform Higher Education (HE) study programmes to ensure curricula that are highly relevant to the contemporary economic and social needs of Africa, equipping graduates with skills and competences for employability and self-employment. The project involves trans-African and trans-continental cooperation between HEIs in East and West Africa and in the EU, as well as local cooperation with external stakeholders. The project will contribute to objectives of the African Union Commission (AUC) Strategy, including provision of higher education that matches opportunities and requirements of local labour markets.Project outputs will be 5 study programmes, aligned with local, national and regional needs and priorities, partly or fully redesigned in close collaboration with external stakeholders, to integrate entrepreneurship, innovation and ecological, social and economic sustainability into curricula, delivered through student-centred learning (SCL) approaches, such as, problem based learning, challenge driven learning, team based learning etc.These curricula will serve as 'best practice' examples within the HEI and after project completion each HEI will have a team of trainers who have the knowledge, skills and competences to train and assist colleagues in designing similar programmes. In this way the project will impact on HE, first in the institutions involved and later at the national and regional levels.

The project ultimately aims at improving patient care and wellbeing in Tanzania. Central notions in this are: Respectful and Compassiante patient centered Care (RCC), communication skills and Health Literacy (HL).RCC and HL have entered strategic plans in education, but are not truly embedded in educational and professional practice in Tanzania yet. Universities have insufficient tools to develop and implement this within the study programmes. This is also identified by the Ministry of Health (involved in this proposal itself). The project aims at enabling Tanzanian universities (and hospitals) to do so.In concrete terms, the project consists of:- Curriculum development in the fields of RCC, HL, student communication skills, adapted to the situation in Tanzania.- Capacity building at university and hospital level: a train the trainer programme will be developed for Tanzania to start to build a pool of lecturers and clinical instructors, competent in teaching and assessing a curriculum based training for Nursing students in Respectful and Compassionate patient centered Care using Health Literacy communication skills. On the Tanzanian side, the partnership consists of three Tanzanian universities in Health, three referral hospitals and the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children. On the European side, three universities (schools in Nursing/Health) from Ireland, Norway and the Netherlands are involved, as well as a University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.The project will take place in three regions of Tanzania. It is foreseen that the curriculum and training will be introduced in the other regions as well (after the project period), with the Ministry as leading institution (Tanzania has a national curriculum in Nursing).