On 8^th to 12^th of May 2017, the SUSFISH-plus Kick Off meeting was held in Vienna, Austria. The Burkinabe SUSFISH-plus delegates (Raymond Ouedraogo, Moumini Savadogo, Patrice Toe, Adama Oueda) together with all Austrian SUSFISH key scientists and partners have discussed and agreed all important future steps according project management. A research agenda and implementation into higher education and governance was compiled to link research questions and tasks. Furthermore, each Work Package defined and presented their questions and planned activities, which were subsequently discussed agreed on all partners. For instance: deliverables, milestones, responsibilities, dimensions of collaboration in terms of: Research Goals, Themes, Hypotheses, Timing (Schedule), Locations (Research Sites), and temporal – spatial scales of investigation.