The Gulf of Guinea Ocean Sciences Summer School (GGOSSS) is an annual summer school dedicated to oceanographic and environmental studies for students and early-career scientists from French-speaking countries of the Gulf of Guinea. The workshop aims to expand opportunities within data-driven ocean science, offering a platform to explore future research directions and foster collaborative networks among attendees.The program will enhance scientific knowledge in oceanography, focusing on a range of critical parameters such as sea level, temperature, salinity, biogeochemistry, and ocean circulation. It will also foster international collaboration in addressing the region's increasing vulnerability to climate change and environmental degradation. The school will bring together leading experts from around the world to offer hands-on training, workshops, and seminars, empowering participants to better understand and address the pressing oceanographic challenges faced by the Gulf of Guinea. ​​

GGOSSS is hosted annually in various French-speaking countries within the Gulf of Guinea, with each year’s location rotating to maximize accessibility, engage local communities, and addresses the unique coastal and marine challenges of each host nation. The inaugural summer school took place at the Faculty of Science of the University of Dschang in Cameroon August 25-29, 2025. It brought together 36 trainees and 12 instructors from six francophone countries of the Gulf of Guinea—Cameroon, Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, and Senegal—for five days of intensive scientific exchange, practical workshops, and field activities.  The second edition will be held in Cotonou (Benin) from 3 to 9 October 2026 and hosted with the institutional and technical support of the International Chair in Mathematical Physics and Applications (ICMPA–UNESCO Chair, Université d'Abomey-Calavi), ensuring high-quality training facilities, logistics, and regional engagement. Cotonou is one of the most climate-vulnerable cities in West Africa, facing rapid shoreline retreat, recurrent flooding, lagoon–ocean exchange challenges, and strong anthropogenic pressures. This setting offers an exceptional real-world laboratory for applied coastal and lagoon oceanography.

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GGOSSS 2026 is supported by OPERA — Ocean Prediction Enhancement in Regions of Africa - a project funded by the European Union and implemented by Mercator Ocean International through its coordinating role in the OceanPrediction Decade Collaborative Centre. With €10 million of European Union funding, OPERA is the ocean component of the Africa Regional Centres of Excellence for the Green Transition (ArcX) programme, and runs from 2025 to 2029 to strengthen ocean prediction capability and cooperation across Sub-Saharan Africa. By training the next generation of ocean scientists in the Gulf of Guinea, GGOSSS 2026 contributes directly to OPERA's capacity-strengthening objectives and to the priorities of the Ocean Decade Africa Roadmap.

Training at GGOSSS 2026 draws on the Copernicus Marine Service, the European Union's marine observation and forecasting programme implemented by Mercator Ocean International, whose freely available data products underpin the satellite remote sensing and numerical modelling components of the school.