The EU has invested an additional €17.6 million to enable more than 8,500 newly selected African students and university researchers to participate in the Erasmus+ programme in 2019, the European Commission announced on Thursday 12 September.
This year, exactly 8,555 African students and university staff and 4,649 European academics will benefit from exchanges in 53 African countries and 34 European countries participating in Erasmus+. Students will be able to stay abroad for up to one year, while staff exchanges will last for a maximum of two months.
The €17.6 million comes from the Commission's external financial instruments and the EU Trust Fund for Africa. This additional funding has increased the participation of African nationals by 40% overall. Thus, the number of scholarships more than doubled for countries in West Africa and the Horn of Africa, and new countries were included in the programme (Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, and Burundi). In addition, 313 young students from 33 African countries received scholarships for the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree programmes.
This African Erasmus+ was created within the framework of the Africa-Europe Alliance for Sustainable Investment and Jobs. It aims to support 35,000 African students and researchers by 2020 (see EUROPE 12096/10, EUROPE 12094/3). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)