The UNESCO Regional Multi-Sectoral Office for Central Africa, in collaboration with the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), is organizing a workshop of higher education experts from Central Africa, from 10 to 12 October 2017, to update the tools of the feasibility study for the creation of PETUs in the sub region. UNESCO and the African Development Bank (AfDB), in addition to other support and initiatives of the African Union and sub-regional organizations, have been technically and financially supportive of the creation of PETUs for more than seven years.

PETUs are international ranking university institutions, open to all and serving the common interest, capable of producing, in main disciplinary fields of technology, an elite likely to be involved in major projects of the economic and social development of the ECCAS countries.

Such disciplinary fields center on the following areas:

• Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, Agro-industry, Biotechnology
• Energetics, Electrical Engineering, Biomedical and Thermal Engineering, Renewable Energies
• Infrastructure, Mining and Metallurgy
• Oil, Gas, Chemical Engineering
• Forest - Wood, Water - Environment
• Applied Maths, Mechanics
• Computer Engineering, Telecommunications, Information and Communication Technology

The various meetings organized since 2010 on PETU have helped achieve the validation of a roadmap, the development of the in situ assessment tools of the candidate institutions and the preparation of a financing request for the project submitted to the AfDB by ECCAS.

This new meeting aims at relaunching project financing process, whose first phase is to update the project document and align it with the new national priorities driven by the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs).

It should be noted that the Yaoundé concertation will also serve as a forum for exchanges on sub-regional initiatives and the identification of the joint intervention areas between UNESCO and ECCAS.