A multidisciplinary research effort, including geological, hydrogeological, hydro-chemical, geophysical, and hydrological investigations, has aimed at locating a source of safe groundwater for the study areas: a prerequisite for the implementation of sustainable water management. A critical review of existing data to propose a regional circulation model of high-fluoride waters along the African Rift Valley was completed. The Flowered Database has been designed and populated, for the three target areas, with collected geo-data. The three dimensional geological and hydrogeological conceptual model has been realized for the target areas, and field sampling campaigns of waters, rocks, and soils have been designed and carried out accordingly. Geological, hydrogeological, and geochemical evidence have been integrated to identify various factors controlling fluoride mobility and concentration. The F geochemical background has been proposed. An original methodology for F determination in plant tissues was developed, based on the microwave assisted wet digestion of samples with hydrogen peroxide at high temperature and pressure. Compared to the alkali fusion, i.e. the most frequent method found in the literature, this method needs less time and lab safety requirements to analyze each sample. For the microwave assisted acid digestion conventional technique with concentrated HNO3, the identified method has the advantage to avoid the loss of analyte due to the presence of nitrous fumes allowing moreover to obtain digests with low residual acidity in agreement with green chemistry principles. Dental fluorosis surveys were conducted in Kenya and Tanzania. Animal tissue samples were collected and analyzed for F concentration to improve the understanding of the risks of F transfer into the human food chain by investigating the accumulation of F in animal products of both managed and wild animals. A new defluoridation method based on the use of the Octacalcium Phosphate (OCP) has been tested on a pre-industrial scale, and the OCP production is ready for the scale-up. This new material can remove fluoride starting from 30 mg/L to below WHO limits of F in drinking water (1.5 mg /L). A corresponding patent was registered and posed the basis for potential commercial use of OCP. A new prototype Flowered Defluoridator Device (FDD), has been designed, fully tested, and capable of removing F from water using the OCP reagent. Based on the architecture of the existing system SHARE-GeoNetwork, a web platform for data sharing, the FLOWERED-SHAREGeoNetwork has been developed. PESTEL (Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, Technological, Environmental, and Legal aspects) and SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses were developed to assess the potential impact of external factors upon the proposed water defluoridation technologies. SWOT and PEST analysis were carried out using country-specific context information aiming at the description of the political, economic, socio‐cultural, technological, and legal contexts, both general and water‐specific, for the project target countries. This knowledge has already been and will be further exploited through the publication of open access articles in high Impact Factor International Journal and presented to international conferences.
