Online Courses

This free, online course is led by Prof Harald Winkler, director of the Energy Research Centre at the University of Cape Town, along with colleagues from the Mitigation Action Plans & Scenarios (MAPS) Programme, a collaborative partnership of country teams in the Global South - Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, India, and South Africa. Climate change mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and development both involve many complex problems that defy easy solutions. Tackling both development and climate change together presents a 'super-wicked' problem - a problem that involves many trade-offs between different objectives - but also, more deeply, it involves dealing with competing interests.

These e-learning modules are part of the Climate System Analysis Group’s online material used in climate science training. The focus in these particular modules is on different types of climate data. When it comes to using climate data, a user is often confronted by very scientific terminology and also lists of multiple sources of data, often with very little guidance on how to apply the data. The objective here is to provide an entry level background to the many concepts used in climate science, to assist users in understanding the data they are using and where it comes from.

This free, online course is led by Prof Mark New, Director of ACDI and explains why climate adaptation is important for Africa. Participants are shown tangible examples of adaptation at work in different contexts and institutional settings. The course includes guest lecturers from across Africa, and is full of interactive and engaging content. This course will appeal to a range of practitioners, professionals and students working in development-related fields in Africa.

This free, online course was created in partnership between Oxfam GB and ACDI. It focuses on the ever increasing imperative of development research programmes contributing to impact beyond the academic sphere. Research for Impact (R4I) is about maximising the opportunities for research processes to contribute to changes in practice and policy. The course explores R4I in detail with empirical evidence from the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project and wider Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA). The course is transdisciplinary in approach and content, pulling from experiences of social and natural scientists as well as development practitioners, government and other stakeholders.