As outlined in the Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016-2025, the African higher education institutions (AHEIs) need to increasingly bring together and exploit the intersections of research, social innovation, and sustainable entrepreneurship to support sustainable, local growth and provide the skills needed for employability. Thus, there is a need in AHEIs for a) producing graduates with skills needed both for understanding and creating local, sustainable growth but also providing them with necessary knowledge for addressing the social and environmental challenges attached to such growth b) becoming producers/disseminators of accessible research based teaching material/knowledge on a variety of geographical scales. The goal of COPAFEU (Co-Producing Knowledge On Sustainable Growth through Service Learning Pedagogy between African and European HEIs) is to enhance the capacity of HEIs to align the skills and knowledge of their graduates to ensure employability and entrepreneurial skills to meet the needs of the local and global labour market, while actively contributing to and shaping sustainable local growth. To do so COPAFEU will develop an innovative, enhanced service learning methodology (E-SL) for the production and dissemination of high quality open-access teaching material on sustainable local growth. COPAFEU will create a strong impact on society by boosting the education capacity of the AHEIs and potential for educational reforms through the professionalization of academic, and administrative staff, boosting employment in the targeted countries by better aligning the students’ skills to the local labour market and community needs as well as joint learning with community actors about new, innovative opportunities for local, sustainable growth.