Vesa Nietosvaara - Satellite Application Courses for African Users
Satellite Application Courses (SAC) for African Users
Co-contributors: Lee-ann Simpson (South African Weather Service), Madalina Ungur (EUMETSAT), Natasa Strelec Mahovic (EUMETSAT), Jose Prieto (EUMETSAT, retired)
SAC Courses for African forecasters have a long history. Today they represent the outcome of years of cooperation between four African Centres of Excellence (CoE) and EUMETSAT. We hope that the introduction below will help the CALMet audience to understand
how a continent-wide collaboration can function despite cultural and language differences. In fact, SAC courses have only strengthened through collaboration between partners from all CoEs.
SAC Courses in brief - the timeline
Current courses in detail - Multilingual aspects
As is shown in the Lee-anns timeline above, SAC courses have lived through stages from a strict classroom era to blended course offerings to the current covid-driven strictly online format. In this section we give a short overview of the recent two courses, 2020 and 2021, and how SAC evolved then. However, It is crucial to remember that the current courses would never have happened without years of cooperation between the partners: the trainer generations in early 2000 laid the foundation of cooperation and a regular training programme. SAC courses also had years of experience in online learning as a part of the blended course programme, which made the sudden shift to online-only learning smoother.
