Inside Africa

The main philosophy of this third Summer Institute is to immerse ESRs in the source-to-sink system of a continental-scale large river, the Orange in Southern Africa, with high economic implications for mining industries (diamonds).
The ESRs will visit the Johannesburg area:
- oldest relief of Africa and dating by kimberlite (visit of mine)
- age of the Orange River
- recent evolution of the relief and Australopithecus evolution (managed by Wits University).
The ESRs will visit the Upper Cretaceous to modern sediments of the Orange mouth and their diamond occurrences (Orange alluvial terraces and marine reworking in the Sperrgebiet area), with two objectives:
- study of the Cenozoic routing system from alluvial to marine environments and
- comparison/correlation of subsurface seismic data with outcropping sediments.
Finally, the INCUBATE block-course will offer training on turning ideas into business spin-offs and state-of-the-art tools for IPR and commercialization / exploitation by innovation specialists UNITEC (incubation service of University of Geneva).