A unique aspect of the eNetwork is a collection of educational projects in water security by students from Africa, Europe, and the United States. The eNetwork Twinning Projects unite student teams from across these three continents to work on specific research and applications. We target early graduate-level students who are in the process of designing their master’s and PhD-level research and who are willing to team with counterparts from both Africa and other parts of the world. Student exchange will be facilitated by the eNetwork portal, and outcomes will be used in other components of partnership activities, including the case study and best practices dissemination as well as our stakeholder engagement elements.

The Twinning effort relies on existing educational infrastructure, chief among these the UNESCO Institute for Water Education (Delft, NETHERLANDS), an institute dedicated to sponsoring advanced degree students from across the developing world. The Institute has 23,000 alumni, most of whom are now engaged as water experts in their home countries. As another example, CUNY has students represented from virtually all nations across sub-Saharan Africa. Other academic partners have similar geographic representation within their student bodies and faculty, setting the stage for a unique South-North partnership linked through these cultural connections.

 Students will be matched with academic institutions, water agencies, ministries, and industries in their respective home countries and mentored by our faculty affiliates. To broaden the twinning effort, the eNetwork capitalizes on additional international capacity-building programs, including the: (i) START program (education for sustainability), specifically its Future Resilience for African Cities and Lands Program (FRACTAL);  (ii) World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO)