iMENTORS has opened its data to all unregistered usersin its last six months of operation. It is important that donors provide information about the aid they give. More important though is for the information to be publicly available in a way that people can easily understand. iMENTORS (www.imentors.eu) is the most comprehensive data map on ICT investments in Africa and contains data across a multitude of entities, classified as organisations, research infrastructures, fibre networks and projects.
Maximenu CK
News & Events
Our blog is where you'll find all our project updates, highlights and achievements, as well as other news and events related to iMENTORS
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Blog posts tagged in NRENs
Theme: Infrastructure – Innovation – Inclusion
Authors are invited to submit 500 word abstracts for presentation at UbuntuNet-Connect 2014, the 7th Annual Conference of the UbuntuNet Alliance. The UbuntuNet-Connect series of conferences has been held for the past 6 years and is regarded as one of the premier conferences in Africa. This year the conference will take place from 13 to 14 November 2014 in Lusaka, Zambia and will be hosted by Zambia Research and Education Network (ZAMREN), the NREN of Zambia.
CONNECT is the magazine from the GÉANT community. The aim is to provide a regular update on the project and its vital work in supporting European research, as well as giving an insight into the users who depend on the network, and the community that makes GÉANT what it is.
The May issue of CONNECT, the magazine dedicated to research and education networking is out now!
You can view it view booklet style or you can download the PDF here. Printed copies are also available from
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Building a State of the Art Network Infrastructure for Research and Education
WACREN will hold its first annual conference on 13 March 2014.
Focused on cost-effective access to high-capacity bandwidth, connectivity and services, the conference will bring together members of the community, decision and policy makers, international partners and communication services providers to get updates from the various NRENs in the region and discuss infrastructure, interconnection and other technical issues.
iMENTORS is mapping terrestrial networks in Sub-Saharan Africa. The goal is to identify areas on the map underserved by network operators and providers. These areas also represent good opportunities for governments and the private sector to invest in e-infrastructure projects.
Image courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
iMENTORS statistics have now been completed for all data recorded up until Dec. 15th! During the last recording period, we added a total of 1398 new organizations and 413 new projects to our database, an increase over the last recording period of approximately 67% and 290%, respectively. In addition, we recorded 330 research infrastructures - a brand new category of information now uploaded and available for search in the iMENTORS database.
Is your organization among the new additions to the iMENTORS database? Check our map today!
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The latest addition to the iMENTORS database is the Connect 4 Change project. Connect 4 Change is a consortium of five Dutch development and ICT organizations collaborating to accelerate the realization of the Millennium Development Goals through the use of ICT. The program supports ICT initiatives in the areas of education, health and agricultural and economic development, and members of the consortium have funded nearly sixty different ICT projects in Africa. The consortium works with local partners in many different countries, including Burkino Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
Image courtesy of cooldesign at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
IST-Africa, a project coordinated by the International Management Commission (IIMC) of Ireland, brings together the national ministries or government agencies in 18 African countries responsible for information and communications technology (ICT) or science, technology and innovation (STI) research and policy.
This past week, iMENTORS (also funded under FP7) has been busy recording the IST-Africa project and related FP7 projects.
Image courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The eastern and southern Africa region waited long for the deployment of the reliable regional data communication e-infrastructure that is now coming online through AfricaConnect and the expansion of the UbuntuNet network. With burgeoning youthful population and low access rates to higher education in eastern and southern Africa, the potential for improvements in education delivery through creative use of new information technology resources is endless. In addition, the network presents many possibilities in research, including enabling regional and global collaboration for researchers in addressing issues of national and regional significance. In both, NRENs are perceived as key players nationally. The annual UbuntuNet-Connect conference provides the appropriate forum to showcase progress in research and education networking in Africa.
iMENTORS goes live and is one step closer to becoming the most comprehensive crowdsourcing map on ICT infrastructures in Sub-Saharan Africa! Users are now able to register and create their profile on the platform and start sharing their knowledge and data directly on the map.
The TERENA Trusted Cloud Drive (TCD) platform should focus on turning personal cloud storage facilities of national research and education networking organisations (NRENs) and universities into trusted services that offer academia alternative storage solutions for data that might pose an unacceptable risk if it were to come into the possession of a foreign government in a non-transparent way. These recommendations were made in the final TCD pilot project report, available as a PDF at http://www.terena.org/publications/.
A memorandum of understanding (MoU), a document describing a bilateral agreement, was signed between eI4Africa and iMENTORS indicating an intended common line of action. The two projects have a common interest in a close cooperation in order to achieve their respective objectives and promote the adoption of consolidated standards in the e-Infrastructure with the ultimate aim of boosting RTDI (Research, Technology Development and Innovation) in Africa.
iMENTORS www.imentors.eu is a one-stop-shop data warehouse on all e-infrastructure development projects of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The objectives of the project are to:
David Foster, Chairman of the Programme Committee for the 2013 TERENA Networking Conference, writes in the Call for Papers for that conference: National Research and Education Networks are facing a period of change and evolving their business models and service offerings. With increasing emphasis on international collaborations, user communities need innovative approaches to exploit the rapid evolution of technologies that are increasingly reliant on excellent networking.
This edition of the Compendium documents that evolution in several different ways.
Technological innovation remains at the heart of what National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) are about. Due to the advent of highcapacity networks, congestion at the levels of campus, backbone and external connections seems to have been largely resolved for the time being.
In recent years, two key innovations have shaped NREN developments:
• NRENs have started to develop and deploy new Authentication and
Authorisation Infrastructures;
• The spread of ‘dark fibre’ networks has enabled novel network architectures that are both more cost-effective and better able to meet changing user demands.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 313203 Copyright © 2014 iMENTORS. All rights reserved.