Appropriate Technologies and social innovation belongs to our vision to implement sustainable development in Africa, particularly in the Horn of Africa, where SUPSI leads the Cluster of cooperation "East Africa and the Horn" promoted by Swissuniversities. "Green it!" project, launched in 2018, aims to establish a Research and Dissemination Centre for appropriate technologies in Hawassa, Ethiopia. This centre, "Green it! International Research and Training Center for Appropriate Technologies", focuses on developing and promoting simple, locally reproducible, and culturally assimilable solutions and is bound to SUPSI with a public-private-partnership. These solutions are designed to be practically effective and socially productive, serving the rural and peri-urban communities of southern Ethiopia and the broader Rift Valley area. 

The project addresses key areas typical of rural Ethiopian life, including water and sanitation, agriculture and livestock, solid waste management, energy, construction, food cooking and preservation, and product processing. Managed by a coordination office and a specific committee, the centre collaborates with local structures, universities, and research centres worldwide. This collaboration involves online work on various topics, pilot projects, and on-site workshops. Local stakeholders are involved at all levels, ensuring knowledge sharing through basic awareness and training with schools, specialized training and business start-ups with women's and youth groups, technical workshops with university students and recent graduates, including international student exchanges, research and experimentation with students, doctoral candidates, and university professors, and management of the centre itself with committees. The cultural exchange fostered by the centre aims to acquire new technologies and local knowledge while promoting awareness of appropriate technologies in the Western world through conferences, scientific and generalist publications and a dedicated website. 

The centre is ideally divided into four sections: Research and Development, studying, testing, evaluating, and optimizing technologies; Start-up, transferring technologies to groups for income-generating activities; Training, Education, and Awareness, providing training at all levels, focusing on appropriate technologies and sustainable development; and Management, planning activities, managing the budget, and designing future strategies. 

Green it! aims to bridge academic research and development cooperation, partnering with universities, research centres, NGOs, public and private entities, and local groups. The goal is to promote economically viable, ecologically and socially sustainable technologies that can be managed and replicated locally, optimizing productive and processing activities in rural and peri-urban contexts of the Rift Valley. This enhances the capacity of local research and development organizations to find appropriate solutions and increases the resilience of rural communities through more rational use of local resources.
Given the collaboration among Green it! and Hawassa University, a number of other activities are carried on and facilitated, such as workshop and study-days on specific topics, conferences, students and teachers trainings, evaluation of other stakeholders' projects.