Twenty three young African environmentalists from 16 African countries representing ministries of environment, universities, and NGOs converged at the UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development (IESD), Shanghai, People’s Republic of China 18-30 May 2008 to attend the Young Environment Leaders Programme for African countries on Environment for Sustainable Development. This training programme was cofinanced by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This program is considered as part of China-Africa cooperation on environmental and its priority of capacity building and technology support to African countries contributing to implementation of the action plan for the environment initiative of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as well as the Bali Strategic Plan.

UNEP- Luohong Young Environmental Leaders Programme  (YELP) was established in 2006 with the kind financial support from Mr. Luo Hong, a Chinese artist. The key purpose of the programme is to provide specialized leadership training to build the capacity of young environmental scientists from developing countries in selected environmental fields. This programme will run initially for 5 years starting from 2007. A two-week training session will be held annually targeting selected region at the UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development (IESD), China. This training course for Africa is the second YELP training after the first one that was organized for Asia Pacific region in September 2007.

In the opening ceremony, Mr. Qian Han, representative of the MOST, Mr. Mohamed Abdel-Monem, UNEP /ROA representative and Jianfu Zhao, vice president of Tongji University were addressed and gave a speech separately.

In the closing ceremony on 29th May 2008, Mr. Luo Hong, one of the sponsors of this training, and Mr. Zhijia Wang, the representative of UNEP, were present and delivered speeches, then award certificates to all the participants. On behalf of all the participants, Dr. Khalid Riak Dthieu from Sudan gave an appreciation speech. This training course took place one week after the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan, when the whole country of China was mobilized to help the recovery from the catastrophic disaster. To express their sympathy and support to Chinese efforts in combat with the earthquake, Dr. Khalid handed over a donation from the participants after his speech to Professor Fengting Li, the vice dean of IESD.

Objective of this workshop was to build the African capacity in the area of disaster risk reduction including early warning systems, prevention and response to disasters, meteorological and cataclysmic disaster engineering and prevention and defense. Other topics covered urban water resources management (drinking water safety & treatment technology, waste water management), solid waste management, public health risk management and adaptation to climate change. English and French translation was also a feature of this workshop because the majority of participants came from Central and North Africa and their working language was French.

The participants evaluated the workshop by the form of scoring various links and giving advices and most of them said that they gained knowledge in this workshop and would practice in their countries. They also appreciated the Chinese Government, MOST, Tongji University, UNEP and Mr. Luo Hong to give the chance for their participation in the programme.