Organization of a summer School for PhD students on urban mobility in Dakar, 1 to 7 october 2022

Following the creation of the Réseau de la Mobilité Urbaine Durable (RéMUD) en 2021, the founding institutions decided to organize a Summer School for PhD Students in October 2022, during the Week of Sustainable Mobility and Climate co-organized by CODATU in Dakar. This first event gathered 14 PhD students from Africa, or whom research topics takes place in Africa, and all their research deals with urban mobility. The educational team of the Summer School was composed of Solène Baffi (CODATU), Jérôme Chenal (EPFL), Mohamed Hanzaz (INAU), Gaële Lesteven (ENTPE), Pap Sakho (UCAD) and Sidy Cissokho (CNRS), as guest speaker. This project benefitted from the support of AUF.

During the first two days that took place at the University Chaik Anta Diop of Dakar, the PhD students participated to work sessions and workshops. First, in order to better know each other, they took part to the exercise “Three minutes thesis”, which enabled to deepen everyone’s communication skills. Other exercises focused on the capacity to articulate a research question and detail an appropriate methodology. During the Second day, discussions and exercises focused on the practice of fieldwork in social science. Two researchers dealing with topics on urban mobility in Africa presented their PhD works and emphasized their methodology and experience of the fieldwork, as well as the interaction between fieldwork and writing. Then, the students conducted a fieldwork exercise by the roundabout Sahm in Dakar, where they were asked to proceed to counting, surveys and interviews. They eventually shared their observation and findings during a final presentation.

After these very fruitful days, the PhD students took part to the Sustainable Mobility and Climate Week from 4 to 7 October. They could attend the plenary sessions and workshops, and discuss with the various stakeholders from the urban mobility sector who were present during the week. On the last day, they got awarded with a certificate of attendance, which was officially delivered by François Durovray, President of CODATU, with the support of Ouidad Tebbaa, Manager of the regional branch West Africa for AUF.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of this event, first of its kind, AUF for its precious support, and the PhD students who actively took part to this activity organized by RéMUD.