In the nineteenth of December, twenty nineteen, in the Meeting Room of the Rectorate at 9 a.m., a meeting chaired by the Rector of Biskra University, Professor Ahmed Boutarfaia for the sake of disseminating the European programs 2020 to researchers. The rector thanked the researchers for their attendance then he presented the internationalization strategy of Biskra University as well as he encouraged them to be part of it. This strategy will increase the openness of the university towards the world through the diversity and continuity in the local, national, regional and international frameworks. After that, he gave the floor to the Professor Mahmoud DEBABECHE, Vice-Rector in charge of External Relations and Cooperation.

   Professor Mahmoud DEBABECHE presented the key actions of the Erasmus + project, and in particular KA02, concerning the cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices. Actions under Key Action 2 allow organizations from different participating countries to cooperate, develop, share and exchange best practices and innovative approaches in the fields of education, training and youth;

• Sector Skills Alliances ensuring cooperation between education and employment in tackling skills gaps with regard to one or more occupational profiles in a specific sector;
• Knowledge Alliances cooperation between higher education institutions and enterprises;
• Capacity Building in the field of youth supporting cooperation with Partner Countries;
• Capacity Building in the field of higher education supporting cooperation with Partner Countries.

    Moreover, the vice rector tackled in his intervention the CBHE projects which our university participated in and its historical background, namely: ICMED (Internationalization of higher education: a new challenge for the Mediterranean region), AFREQEN (Quality in higher education for renewable energies in North and West Africa), and Arim-Net (Coordination of agricultural research in the Mediterranean). In addition to what is stated above, Prof. Mahmoud Debabeche spoke about the two new projects that our university won during the last call 2019: the PRIMA -HortiMED- project (The partnership for research and innovation in the region Mediterranean) & the ELAN project (Modernization of language teaching in the language centers of Algerian universities). At the end, he talked about some KA02; CBHE opportunities for 2020 and he incited the researchers to be part of these projects.

After that, the speech was given to Dr. Belkacem Boumaraf, head of the project monitoring unit, which was about the three European projects named below;
   • The H2020 program:

It is the largest research and innovative program that the EU ever carried out, by promoting the transition of big ideas from the laboratory to the market, which will lead  to the revolutionary advances and discoveries, in addition to the interest of investors from the public and private sectors to benefit from its funding that reached nearly of 80 billion Euros over 7 years (from 2014 to 2020). The H2020 programs have been associated with it through its project calls the non Europeans countries including Algeria.
    • COST action:

European cooperation in science and technology (COST) is an organization which funds the creation of research networks, called COST ACTIONS. These networks offer an open space for collaboration between scientists from all over Europe, complete with neighboring countries, including Algeria, and it gives to research advances and innovation in order to apply for excellence research projects at the national and international level.
    • PRIMA :

Partnership in Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area is an integrated research and innovation program aimed at supporting research and development activities on food systems, production and water resources implemented by the PRIMA foundation, located in Barcelona; 19 states participate in PRIMA and Its fund is 500 million Euros over 7 years.  Our university during the last call for projects won a PRIMA project in section 01 funding, it is exclusively European, as well as another project scientifically selected at the first evaluation and which did not lead to the second evaluation due to the lack of funds.

Afterwards, the floor was given to Professor Nacer Tarai, the coordinator of the HortiMed project. It was selected, the project, during the call launched in 2019 in section 01 of the PRIMA program, in the pillar, production system. He highlighted during this presentation, the main impacts of the project and the excellence of the objectives targeted by this consortium.

At the end of this meeting, the rector, Professor Ahmed BOUTERFAIA, opened the debates then he concluded by the need to encourage our teachers to participate massively in the European programs mentioned above, which will be a sort of Biskra University internationalization strategy.