CENSU - Climate Change Energy Sustainability

CENSU is a Norwegian-Tanzanian-Mozambican university collaboration within education and research which focuses on sustainable gas extraction and governance in the context of vulnerable communities and climate change.

About the project

CENSU is a partnership between OsloMet, University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), State University of Zanzibar (Tanzania), Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique) and Universidade Lurio (Mozambique), financed by Norad’s NORHED II program. CENSU’s chief objective is to foster competence and capacity – within both education and research – on the sustainability implications of gas extraction and governance in the context of vulnerable communities and climate change. Tanzania and Mozambique hold huge gas deposits in the Rovuma Basin in the Indian Ocean, and emerging gas extraction activities pose both opportunities and challenges.   

Consequently, CENSU speaks directly the larger sustainable development agenda and the SDGs (goals no. 1, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16). CENSU’s themes and geographies are, furthermore, particularly relevant to key concerns and priorities in Norway’s development policy.    

CENSU will contribute substantially to research competence and education at the partnering university. It will fund 8 PhD fellowships and 20 master grantees – of which 8 will do OsloMet’s Master in International Education and Development (MIED) – all from the Southern partner universities. Select Norwegian students at MIED will have the opportunity to carry out their master theses research with the help of Southern partners, within the CENSU research portfolio.

Key research question addressed through CENSU include:

• How are ecological and social dynamics interwoven in relation to gas extraction in fragile societies and vulnerable environments?
• To what extent, and how, are local community livelihoods affected by gas extraction activities?
• How do governing institutions and transnational petroleum corporations and their contractors respond to expectations and concerns of citizens, and how do they promote sustainable development?