In May/June 2018, DARA students from Botswana and Namibia convened at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) in Palapye, Botswana, to embark on their fourth and final unit as DARA programme students. For two weeks, they studied the details of radio interferometry and, importantly, how put this knowledge into practice. Jan Forbrich (University of Hertfordshire) and Nick Wrigley (University of Manchester) served as trainers for this class. In practical tutorials, they not only taught basic use cases for different radio interferometers, but they also highlighted how radio interferometry techniques enable some of their own research work. Nick, who works for the eMerlin interferometer in the UK even presented some live fringes from this observatory. To relax in-between the two weeks of intense radio interferometry studies and to highlight the natural environment and wildlife of Botswana, the group visited nearby Kharma Rhino Sanctuary on a weekend day trip. The training concluded with a little ceremony where the official DARA participation certificates for handed out.

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This training event was co-sponsored by the EU 'Jumping JIVE' project which is facilitating and supporting the participation of expert lecturers from multiple EU institutes in the DARA programme. This EU project is also funding a number further opportunities for training and education in both Africa and the EU.  The JUMPING JIVE project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730884