As part of its Open Innovation strategy and in line with its commitment to staying on the leading edge of automotive research, PSA Peugeot Citroën said it is strengthening its ties with top post-graduate schools and universities by creating an OpenLab in Africa.

PSA Peugeot Citroën has entered into an agreement with five Moroccan universities, two US universities with campuses in Morocco, one locally-based Ecole Centrale engineering school, and a technology transfer centre at the International University of Rabat to create the OpenLab.

The new OpenLab, dubbed “Sustainable Mobility for Africa,” will engage in a four-year research program to explore sustainable mobility systems with three core focuses: the electric vehicle of the future, renewable energy, and the logistics of the future. The program will leverage PSA Peugeot Citroën’s scientific and professional expertise, the expertise of the partner universities, and a number of technological platforms which will be made available to researchers in Morocco, according to the automaker.

In this way, after deploying its Science Technologies Exploratory Lean Laboratory (StelLab) organisation in Europe, Asia and Latin America, PSA Peugeot Citroën said it is strengthening its network to nurture close relationships with future scientific hubs.

PSA Peugeot Citroën said it has adopted an Open Innovation strategy which entails building and managing relationships with a variety of ecosystems — from individuals and business to the academic world and institutions.

As part of its relationship with the academic ecosystem, the Group launched the StelLab network of OpenLabs and academic chairs in 2010. StelLab is designed to strengthen PSA’s scientific partnerships with publicly-funded laboratories involved in leading-edge research, according to the automaker.

The OpenLab network operates worldwide to respond more effectively to the societal, environmental and economic challenges associated with the “car of the future,” benefiting from the shared human and experimental resources of PSA Peugeot Citroën and its partner laboratories, according to the automaker.