Focus on Africa Space Science and Technology 4 Future development (FAST4Future) aims at strengthening Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in Africa Higher education by promoting Planetary and Space Science and Technology (PSST) for the sustainable growth and jobs creation in a continent that is rapidly embracing the 4th industrial revolution. PSST has been identified as key area of investment in Africa as it provides graduates and young scientists with both the necessary soft and practical skills to face 21st century challenges such as digital innovation and job creation. The aims of FAST4Future are: i) To increase the accessibility to STEM in African Higher Education (HE); ii) To modernize existing PSST programmes in collaboration with industry and policy makers; iii) To foster the internationalization of partner HEIs by promoting mobility of staff; iv) to promote standardization of PSST in Africa in support of students’ mobility. To achieve these ambitious goals FAST4future will promote the creation of a Centre of Excellence in PSST (CESST) linked to a virtual platform to increase the accessibility coordinate collaborative actions including: i) analysis of the conditions of women in STEM; ii) review existing PSST programs in order to fill the mismatches between academic offer and job market requirements; iii) draft a white paper for the credit recognition of PSST courses across African institutions; iv) train administrative staff and facilitate the mobility of academic staff; v) promote the transfer of skills in key strategic areas of PSST to boost the employability of graduate students. The creation of a virtual platform within CESST will open new pathways for dissemination of high quality academic contents that can potentially reach thousands of STEM students across the continent and facilitate the access to STEM disciplines for Africans living in remote areas, conflict zones and will, eventually, improve the number of women in STEM.

Travelling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs) constitute a threat for operational systems for which the ionosphere is an essential part (i.e., radio systems) or for which the ionosphere is fundamentally a nuisance (i.e. GNSS based systems and applications). The overarching objective of TechTIDE is to design and test new viable TID impact mitigation strategies for the technologies affected by the TIDs and in close collaboration with operators of these technologies, to demonstrate the added value of the proposed mitigation techniques which are based on TechTIDE products. To achieve this main goal, it is necessary to address the following specific objectives: i. Improve understanding regarding the physical processes resulting in the formation of TIDs, and consequently to identify the drivers in the interplanetary medium, the magnetosphere and the atmosphere; ii. Define the impact of the TIDs on the space based navigation systems (mainly EGNOS services and N-RTK) and on ground-based HF communication and geolocation systems; iii. Develop improved methodologies, based on consortium partners’ algorithms, suitable to support for the first time the direct,real-time identification and tracking of TIDs over wide world regions; iv. Establish an operational system to issue warnings of the occurrence of TIDs over the region extending from Europe to South Africa, to estimate the parameters that specify the TID characteristics and the inferred perturbation, and provide all additional geophysical information to the users to help them assess the risks and to develop mitigation techniques, tailored to their applications; v. Work systematically with potential users to assess the functionality, reliability and efficiency of the TechTIDE services paving the way to its systematic exploitation from users and to its sustainable operation.