This initiative strives to develop analytical and abstract skills, thus motivating students to opt for higher education STEM degrees.

In Cape Verde, this project extends to students from every island that complete their 10^th grade with both an overall average and a maths result of over 16, who are then selected by taking a test.

The activities are developed at in-person level one camps (designed for students transiting from the 10th to the 11th grade) in which the key objective is working on the motivations of students. These students are then accompanied online throughout the academic year in order to consolidate the knowledge acquired at the camps before the students then attend in-person level two camps, with a one-week duration, when the primary objective is to prepare the students to enter university.

In Sao Tome and Principe, the Foundation ran non-residential 10-day educational activity camps between 2019 and 2023. Here, the objectives involved not only secondary school students learning but also stimulating their enjoyment of mathematics, enabling self-learning and developing the individual mathematical capacities of students with study grade averages of over 14. This project also aims to strengthen and consolidate the knowledge of secondary school mathematics teachers. This initiative arose out of a partnership between the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Sao Tome and Principe Ministry of Education and the Portuguese and Sao Tomean Mathematics Societies.

Promoter: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and in Cape Verde, the University of Cape Verde
Technical partners: the Portuguese Mathematics Society and the Sao Tomean Mathematics Society
Location: Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe
Target audience: Secondary school teachers and students in Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe
Duration: 2020-2027

An initiative launched in 2018 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation with the objective of stimulating the pleasures and vocation of university students in the second and third years of their degrees with a major mathematics component for research in this field. Participating students are integrated into a program with a duration of one or two academic years under the supervision of university lecturers at the University of Cape Verde and not only carry out an extended research project in the field of Mathematics (e.g.: applied optimisation in civil engineering projects; mathematical models for the diffusion of pharmaceuticals based on differentiated ordinary equations; mathematical models for economy-ecological interactions…) but also strengthen self-confidence in the field of mathematics and the capacity to both communicate mathematic arguments and stimulate critical thinking and creativity. Thus far, this has involved 28 young persons with some having produced their first scientific article (in English) in conjunction with their tutors.

Promoter and executor: University of Cape Verde
Location: Cape Verde
Target public: Mathematics undergraduate students
Duration: 2018-2027

A group of 30 12th grade students from state secondary schools in Bissau are participating in a pilot project designed with the objective of strengthening their competences in the fields of mathematics, Portuguese, ITCs and project organisation. This project enabled an understanding of the real state of teaching in the public schools of Guinea Bissau and demonstrated that when these students – who are growing up in environments with enormous shortcomings of various different types – are provided with the basic conditions for quality learning, they are able to acquire and internalise knowledge and competences that enable them to enter into higher education or the professional employment market with better qualifications. The project has already run for two cycles.

Promoter: Associação Ser Mais Valia 
Location: Bissau
Target public: Secondary school students in Bissau
Duration: 2021-2025

A pilot initiative that integrates two projects networked by the higher education institutions responsible for training secondary school maths teachers for the PALOPs and Portugal, with the objective of improving the quality of mathematics teaching while also contributing towards greater coordination of the higher education programs in this field among the partner countries, an objective of both the African Union and the CPLP.

This seeks to leverage university networks training maths teachers, which undertake teaching, outreach and research activities in collaborative working contexts and nurturing collaborative outputs encapsulating scientific knowledge about maths education in the different countries.

Promoter: Nova University of Lisbon and the University of Minho
Technical partners: Portuguese universities and the PALOPs
Location: PALOPs
Target public: Secondary school maths teachers in the PALOPs
Duration: 2025-2027

With the objective of improving the teaching of mathematics in secondary schools, the Foundation, in conjunction with the Directorate of Education Planning and Innovation, promotes a training project spanning all mathematics teachers in the country, based on consolidating their scientific knowledge and fostering new teaching methodologies.

Promoter: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Directorate of Education Planning and Innovation of the Sao Tome and Principe Ministry of Education, Culture and Science
Technical partners: the Portuguese Mathematics Society
Location: Sao Tome and Principe
Target public: Secondary school mathematics teachers in Sao Tome and Principe
Duration: 2024-2025

This is the first regional mathematics doctoral degree program in the PALOPs and with the specific objective of training highly qualified human resources for the mathematics field in these countries. 

This doctoral degree aims to reinforce the teaching staff at PALOP universities and that they also engage in research programs. Another objective includes nurturing the consolidation of the African scientific community, setting up research networks among the PALOPs and combat the brain drain from Africa. 

The program was launched in November 2023 at the University of Cape Verde with this initiative including the Agostinho Neto University, in Angola, and the University of Coimbra. This draws on the members of staff of these participant institutions as well as those from other African institutions (in South Africa and the Ivory Coast) and Europe (Spain).

Promoter: University of Cape Verde and Agostinho Neto University
Technical partner: University of Coimbra
Location: Cape Verde
Target public: Doctoral degree students
Duration: 2023-2026

The Foundation hereby provided support to the first Master's Degrees in Mathematics at the University of Cape Verde and at the Eduardo Mondlane University, in Mozambique and in Applied Mathematics at the Agostinho Neto University, in Angola, under the auspices of a tender for higher education institutions in the PALOPs in the 2019/2020 academic year.

In the first edition of these three Master's Degrees, 59 students enrolled at the three universities of whom 10 passed the curricular component of the Master's Degree and 20 received their Master's Degrees. 

Currently, the second programs are under way: at the Agostinho Neto University, the Master's Degree in Applied Mathematics, in partnership with the University of Coimbra; at the University of Cape Verde, the Master's Degree in Pure Mathematics.

Promoter:  Agostinho Neto, Luanda, Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo and University of Cape Verde, Praia
Technical partners: Aveiro, Coimbra and Porto universities
Location: Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique
Target public: Master's degree students
Duration: 2019-2026

The Foundation has supported PALOP universities launching post-graduate programs (not endowing any degree and selected through means of tenders). Three editions have taken place since 2021 and with the support primarily destined to financing the lecturing costs, specifically of international professors. Thus far, those receiving such support total 16 programs in Data Science, Cybersecurity, Computational Statistics, Mathematics for Companies, among others…, in Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique, with over 450 students enrolled and 268 approved in the different fields. 

Promotor: PALOP universities
Technical partners: Portuguese universities
Location: Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique
Target public: PALOP mathematics graduates
Duration: 2021-2026

The promoting of quality in higher education and its sustainability also involves incentives for the interlinkage between university teaching and research. Dev-Math PALOP represents an initiative designed to stimulate higher education lecturers holding doctoral degrees to advance with their research careers in the mathematics field. The researchers, in a first phase, attend an internship with a maximum duration of four months, in one of the participant research centres in Portugal. Throughout this internship, they draft research project proposals in coordination with their supervisor. Researchers qualifying for the second phase then spend two years developing their research project at an African higher education institution.

Promoter: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Location: Portugal and the PALOPs
Target public: Post-doctoral researchers in the PALOPs
Duration: 2024-2027

Within the framework of strengthening teaching and research in geometry in the PALOPs, the University of Cape Verde hosts a Summer School in Geometry. Accepting around 30 participants each year, the training spans a total of 36 contact hours and 76 hours of autonomous study. Three summers schools have already been held.

The courses, workshops and the final Summer School conference are the responsibility of lecturers from the University of Coimbra and the University of Cape Verde in addition to the participation of a University of Minho professor in the final conference.

Promotor: University of Cape Verde
Technical partners: Portuguese universities
Location: University of Cape Verde
Target public: Mathematics graduates, secondary school and university teachers and researchers in the PALOPs
Duration: 2023- 2025

The Foundation launched a tender for Advanced Scientific Internships for higher education lecturers, holding Master's Degrees and already in employment at a higher education institution in the PALOP and who aim to begin or consolidate research activities in the Mathematics field through undertaking a scientific internship at a Portuguese higher education institution.

The program has gone through four editions with 48 professionals from five PALOPs successfully completing their internships. The incentives for research and the scientific progress of teaching staff reflect the relevance of this program in keeping with the alignment with core questions for the growing autonomy and pedagogic, scientific and academic sustainability of the teaching and training opportunities in these countries.

Promoter: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Technical partners: Portuguese universities
Location: PALOPs and Portugal
Target public: PALOPs mathematics researchers
Duration: 2020-2027