Master's in Health, Safety and Environment in Mozambique: first graduating class!

In an effort to support the development of higher education in Mozambique and to improve employability in the field of health, safety, and environment (HSE), the consortium has agreed to fund a HSE master's degree at the country's leading university – the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo (UEM).

France Éducation International has partnered with  the University of Technology of Troyes, two research professors and a private  expert specialising in the field of oil and gas,  to support this initiative.  The contract, which was signed in early 2019, will run for 51 months. This is the first privately funded tender that FEI has procured .  

In  the first phase of the project, FEI and its partners defined the curriculum, set up a distance-learning platform, trained teachers, developed local partnerships, and implemented a communication strategy with students and local companies.

The second phase, which began in February 2020, involves participating in the development of the master's programme for three years, accompanying and ensuring the teaching of the course modules to the first two cohorts  of students and continuing to train the local teaching staff.

Successfully adapting to the pandemic

Upon HSE Master’s programme’s successful acquisition of academic accreditation by Mozambican authorities, an online teaching platform was developed, and students were selected from about 50 applications. Courses for the HSE Master’s programme, taught by French instructors, started in February 2020.

The global health crisis   resulted in the postponement of  courses that were scheduled in the  the first few months of the programme. Faced with the international travel ban, the FEI team quickly proposed to have the students work on personal projects in line with the themes of the master's programme, and then,  with the approval of  the investor , to continue their projects remotely.

Thanks to the online teaching platform and the unfailing reliability  of the FEI team, the French teachers' courses  were followed and assimilated by Mozambican students and teachers. Since the   investor reported very positive results in  the first year of distance learning, the decision was made to maintain the same level of investment from the FEI teaching staff for the second cohort.

Recognised academic success

The first HSE Master’s programme cohort  graduated in March 2022. To mark this  occasion, the students were invited  to present their internship thesis at a seminar in the presence  of a hundred representatives of local and international institutional administrative authorities and major oil and gas companies.  A number of students were even offered promises of employment by various companies during this seminar.

Additionally, the UEM received nearly one hundred applications for the second cohort of the master’ programme. This alone is proof of the strong interest that educational programmes proposed by the FEI team encourage.

Gender equality was among  the selection criteria for the candidates. Alongside this new cohort of students, the university has decided to welcome an additional cohort  which it will  oversee independently, using the resources and knowledge gathered by the French teachers on the online platform.

Through these actions, FEI, in its role as an integrator, was able to demonstrate its expertise  in terms of employability and establishing a high-level university curriculum adapted to the local context. The teams will do everything in their power to ensure that the second cohort  of students achieve the same success as their predecessors. In anticipation of the end of the project in March 2023,the UEM and private companies in the sector are currently engaging in discussions in an effort to make this master’s degree programme a permanent one.