Research Programmes of AEON To meet new Earth System challenges across Africa, three major foundation Research & Development programmes have been designed: Iphakade will “observe the present and consider the past to ponder the future”, with a shared vision of “Sustainable Africa”. A first order task of Iphakade is to establish with a high degree of certainty how to best differentiate natural from anthropogenic Earth system changes, and to use this knowledge wisely to assess and economically evaluate global changes induced by humans in Africa. The Iphakade programme will reconstruct the memory of Earth’s co-evolving systems, using state-of-the-art analytical tools to produce a database for Africa and its resources with which to pursue Earth Stewardship Science and model sustainable “footprints” for Africa. The first of Iphakade’s two sub-programmes takes a long term view of the Co-Evolution of the African Continent, surrounding oceans, and biota over 4.0 billion years, and will tease out the “memory” of Earth’s turbulent life and climate past, something which is recorded better in Africa than on any other continent: Co-evolution of the African Continent, surrounding Oceans, and Biota · 4 billion years of Africa’s history · The evolution of Africa’s topography, river basins and biodiversity · Processes that govern the chemistry of Africa and its oceans · Palaeo-ecodynamics and the origination and extinction of biodiversity in Africa · Causes and effects of catastrophic changes in Africa · The emergence of the modern African environment and humans The second programme will focus on more recent events and analyse the origin and exploitation of Africa’s natural resources and their evolving tensions with society: Africa’s Natural Resources and Society · The genesis and structure of Africa’s resources · The ecological economics of Africa’s resources · Africa’s commons and society Africa’s environmental hazards Inkaba ye Africa specifically links Earth and space observations. Participating scientists will survey interactions and feed-back systems in a cone-shaped sector of the Earth, from core to space, projected through southern Africa and its surrounding oceans. New technologies will create a geodetic infrastructure central to the needs of leading-edge African Earth Systems Science, minerals and energy exploration, and spatial planning. With time, Inkaba will develop forecasting techniques so that climate and magnetic-field strength changes, depletion of natural resources and biodiversity, as well as natural hazards, in Africa, will become better understood. Africa Alive Corridors is part of a global project entitled “Gondwana Alive” (GA) managed by AEON. This project provides a way of celebrating the unique geological, biological and cultural heritage of Gondwana of which, 150 millions years ago, Africa formed the heartland. Africa’s “Corridors” offer a focus for the holistic management of its heritage. 13-odd corridors in Africa weave a tapestry of the prodigiously diverse planet tracing geological time from the oldest crust to the youngest ice-sheets, and from the earliest microbial life to the current activities of our human family. The corridors will be mapped and GIS-documented to offer a science-based strategy to manage what Harvard University biologist E O Wilson has termed humanity’s present “bottleneck”, and what others call the sixth extinction.