Category Archives: André

Update

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by André

This blog has not been updated in a while and here’s a list of our activities in the last few months.

  • Odila, Stefan and Irene have returned to the Netherlands, delivered their final reports and we are now in the process of finalizing and sending them to our partners. They did a great work, thank you guys!
  • Last week was the official kick-off of the program Urbanising Deltas of the World (UDW) of NWO-WOTRO which funds ours and seven other projects; we had a meeting in Den Haag with all groups and it was great meeting everyone else. All the groups have a very different background and I am sure that we can learn a lot from everyone. NWO has also launched a new call for proposals, UDW-II.
  • Also last week André, Nelson (UEM) and Sandra (UEM) attended the Deltas in Time of Climate Change in Rottterdam (The Netherlands) and André gave a presentation based on the work of Odilia, Stefan and Irene entitled “Centralized and de-centralized wastewater treatment in Maputo”. Nelson participated in a discussion session entitled “Science and Practice meet and feed each other in developing new delta management approaches”
  • We have pre-selected some Mozambican students for the PhD vacancies but we still hiring.
  • Two TU Delft students have now arrived in Maputo, Justus and Thijs. Next week Lena, from BOKU (Austria) will join them; and later this month, Timóteo (Unesco-IHE) will complete the group. Justus and Thijs will gather as much information as possible about the existing wastewater and drainage network. Lena will focus of the flows of faecal sludge matter in the peri-urban areas of Maputo. Finally, Timóteo will study the applicability of algae ponds in Maputo. You can expect plenty of updates from them.
  • Justus, Thijs and Lena will obtain useful data for André’s project: mass balance to the water and sanitation sector in Maputo. André will be in Maputo from mid-October until mid-November.

André

First week, first post

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Me and Luuk arrived last week in Maputo. The objective of this first week was mainly meeting some of the project partners and it was a success. We had meetings with people from Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, with Vitens Evides International, with the Dutch Embassy in Maputo, with the Mozambican consultancy firm Salomon and with the NGO Pamodzi.

We also had the opportunity to interview four candidates interested in the PhD vacancies available in our project. After the interviews we were confident that it will be possible to recruit the PhD within the deadline – until the end of the year.

Three students from TU Delft (two BSc students and one MSc student) also arrived in the country. The students, Odilia, Stefan and Irene, will stay in Mozambique for 3 months and will support starting the project and will be responsible for initiating the field work both in the peri-urban areas (de-centralized water reuse) and at the wastewater treatment plant (centralized water reuse). They will also be responsible for maintaining the blog while in Mozambique so you can expect many posts from them during this period.

André Arsénio