GGOSSS 2026: Hands-On Ocean Observation Training for the Gulf of Guinea

The second edition of the Gulf of Guinea Ocean Sciences Summer School (GGOSSS) will take place from 3 to 9 October 2026 in Cotonou, Benin, hosted by the International Chair in Mathematical Physics and Applications (ICMPA–UNESCO Chair) at the Université d'Abomey-Calavi. Forty-five trainees and fifteen instructors from across Africa, Europe and North America will spend seven days on instrumentation, satellite remote sensing, numerical modelling and Python-based data analysis, including a full-day observation campaign on Lake Nokoué.

Trainees deploying in-situ instruments during the GGOSSS 2025 field campaign at the Municipal Lake of Dschang, Cameroon. Credit: GGOSSS

A gap in ocean observing capacity

Ocean observing training in West and Central Africa has been concentrated overwhelmingly in anglophone countries, leaving francophone institutions with far fewer opportunities to build practical capability. GGOSSS was founded to close that gap. The school is conducted primarily in French, with materials in English, and draws its trainees from Master's and doctoral students, early-career researchers, university lecturers, and professionals working in coastal and marine management across the region.

Founded and led by Babette Christelle Tchonang, the school aims not only to deliver hands-on training in oceanographic measurement, but to build a durable professional network of emerging ocean scientists in a region acutely exposed to climate change.

Observation at the centre of the programme

Trainees working with CTD probes during the GGOSSS 2025 practical sessions. Credit: GGOSSS

Trainees work directly with the instruments used in operational oceanography: CTD profilers, ADCPs, GPS shoreline survey equipment and multiparameter probes. The training covers the full measurement chain — designing and executing a sampling campaign, applying quality control procedures, and calibrating and validating the data collected.

On the third day the entire cohort takes to the water for a full-day observation campaign on Lake Nokoué and the adjacent coastal zone, collecting CTD profiles, water quality measurements, GPS shoreline surveys and bathymetry.

The data is not a demonstration exercise. As at Dschang in 2025 - where measurements taken by trainees were shared with the municipality for local monitoring — the observations gathered on Lake Nokoué become the raw material for the group projects presented at the end of the week.

Integrating satellite, in-situ and model data

Around the observational core, the programme covers satellite remote sensing using Copernicus Marine Service products, numerical modelling with the CROCO regional ocean model, and Python-based analysis of NetCDF data.

The consistent emphasis is on integration rather than specialisation in isolation. For three days trainees split into three groups — in-situ observations and instrumentation, satellite remote sensing, and numerical modelling — before reconvening on the final day to present group projects drawing on all three data sources together.

Cotonou: a coastline under pressure

Cotonou offers an unusually direct connection between the measurements and the problems they inform. The city faces severe coastal erosion and shoreline retreat, sea-level rise and recurrent flooding, and complex lagoon–ocean exchanges through the Cotonou Channel. Trainees apply the instruments and methods they are learning to environmental challenges affecting their own communities and coastlines.

Building on Dschang

The inaugural edition, held at the University of Dschang in Cameroon from 25 to 29 August 2025, brought together 36 trainees and 12 instructors from six francophone countries: Cameroon, Benin, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Congo and Senegal. Participants left with practical skills in instrumentation, satellite data analysis and modelling — and, as several noted at the closing ceremony, with a network of colleagues across borders.

The alumni community built across the two editions is intended to outlast the schools themselves, seeding a durable community of practice in ocean observation across francophone Africa.

Participants and instructors of GGOSSS 2025 with the authorities of the University of Dschang. Credit: GGOSSS

Acknowledgments and partners

GGOSSS 2026 is made possible through the support of 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, and draws throughout on the Copernicus Marine Service, the European Union's marine observation and forecasting programme.

The school is also supported by the Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO), the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR).

Institutional and technical support is provided by the ICMPA–UNESCO Chair at the Université d'Abomey-Calavi, the Institut de Recherches Halieutiques et Océanologiques du Bénin (IRHOB), the Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School in Nigeria and Ghana (COESSING), and PRODATA SARL.

Applications for 2026 are closed and trainees have been selected. The full programme is available at www.ggosss.org.