With its approach of integrating spatial data on key pollution drivers, tailored monitoring approaches, text-mined information, and water quality modelling, In4NILE addresses the critical lack of water quality information in the Nile River Basin with four interconnected PhD Projects

In4Nile is funded by the UFZ’s PhD Cohort funding scheme, bringing together four doctoral projects centred around a common research topic. The PhD projects combine the synthesizes spatial data on key pollution drivers (PhD 1), develop chemical monitoring strategies (PhD 2), (PhD 3) applies natural language processing to map reported risks and impacts, and (PhD 4) integrates these data into spatially explicit multi-pollutant models to identify hotspots and future scenarios. Together, the projects contribute to an integrated Nile Basin Knowledge Hub.

RISKTEX sampling campaign started to unravel pollution sources and risk drivers in River Sosiani, Eldoret, Kenya

RISKTEX is a DAAD funded Doctoral Degree Scholarship by Vincent Rotich based on the collaboration between UFZ, Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya, and Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, testing strategies on pollution source and chemical risk driver identification in a multiply impacted African river. It combines passive and active sampling strategies with LC- and GC-HRMS screening, biotesting and data science. Capturing pollution remobilisation at the beginning of the rainy season, Vincent Rotich and a group of helpers from Moi University deployed passive samplers along the course of the river through the city of Eldoret and beyond to capture highly hydrophobic pollutants. More hydrophilic compounds such as pharmaceuticals, many pesticides and industrial chemicals are actively sampled following a water package downstream.

In September 2025 the "Global Seminar: Solutions for the ONE WORLD" was held with 30 international scientists in the field of chemical monitoring with a specific focus on the Global South and the establishment of a sustainable network to find solutions to pollution all over the world. It was the kick-off of this network.