“It appears important to us to mention the interest of Senegalese institutions (University, government) for space sciences at various levels. This guarantees a long-term impact of our efforts, integrated into the nation-vision, with regular exchanges with the Ministry of Research, Higher Education and Innovation (MESRI), and leaders at the university. For this purpose multiple projects are elaborated and meetings have been organized. Since 2018, meetings bringing together local actors, academics and theMESRI have been held to refine the development strategy for teaching Earth and Spatial Sciences at university and for the development of research activities in this area.
For instance, the MESRI is building an astronomical observatory, and is establishing new partnership in this area with world-class centres of excellence. The MESRI and Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) have agreed to collaborate with the University of Toulouse for the Graduate School of Earth and Spatial Science “TESSâ€), which will favour regular exchanges of students and staff between Senegal and Toulouse. Two agreements were signed between these actors, TESS/MESRI (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a-EW6912Dz_ATwqI4gH1mQsbIEsS-bnY/view?usp=sharing),
TESS/UCAD (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Rnz8tifzuxyAxis_YTyi2k6UUB8Tkb3/view?usp=sharing)
Senegal has therefore made an important step toward the development of professional astronomy and the young generation is willing to move forward with the development of astronomy at all levels. Our project will focus on a program that would be integrated in the existing masters or bachelors in Physics and Mathematics. We will involve all key actors (university students, teachers, secondary teachers, and amateur astronomers) in this process.
For this purpose, we will organize a 6-days training session around two themes a) acquiring astronomical data remotely with Astrolab, b) data processing using the python programming language with the library Astropy”
