Our blog is where you'll find all our project updates, highlights and achievements, as well as other news and events related to iMENTORS
Presentations of the e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future conference (October 29, 2014 – Brussels, Belgium) are now available via this link!
Videos of each session, including the referent panel discussions, are also available as a complement to the presentations. Please access the Video gallery of the conference.
The full programme of the day is available here.
Why should African countries invest in developing e-Infrastructures in Africa? The EC’s 2007 Green Paper “The European Research Area: New Perspectives” points out that investing in e-Infrastructures can have significant benefits to a country, as it can enable the long-term sustainability of e-Infrastructures, as well as facilitate both industry involvement and the added-value to society that comes with the technology mix, the diversity of users and the local economic and social conditions. Accordingly, the eI4Africa project brings forward a set of recommendations and guidelines to developers and/or policy makers in Africa addressing the following four topics:
The above findings are presented in more detail in D3.2 ‘Recommendations for African e-Infrastructure development’ and can be discussed by emailing the project partnership at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMentors joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium, at Hotel Bloom. Click here to register!
Established in 2010, the FTTH Council Africa is an independent, not for profit organisation and active member of the Fibre Council Global Alliance (FCGA) alongside the FTTH Council Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, Middle East and North Africa.
The work of the individual FTTH Council’s is funded through member contributions, and the FCGA has more than 550 individual member companies, all equally passionate about FTTH.
UbuntuNet-Connect is the Annual Conference of UbuntuNet Alliance that focuses on research and education networking activities in Africa. It is organized by UbuntuNet Alliance and hosted by member NRENs. The Conference brings together practitioners in the research and education networking community, researchers, policy makers, academicians, connectivity providers, and a pool of expertise from across Africa and beyond. In previous years, the conference has attracted sponsorship from leading commercial companies and service providers.
The most important results that iMENTORS has achieved include:
· A set of (collected and imported into the platform) data about more than 2.500 organizations, 250 projects, 150 networking infrastructures and 350 research infrastructures active in the e-infrastructure domain in the Sub- Saharan;
· A useful, yet simple and applicable project evaluation and sustainability frameworks closely interlinked with the decision support system;
· A GIS-based powerful platform which helps to visualize different perspectives of the project findings;
· A community of interested participants built through a variety of dissemination activities in different countries and through collaboration with other projects.
Take a look at the map!
This is the new iMENTORS banner on the ASREN homepage:
Have you used the iMENTORS opendata service and would like to share the news on your homepage?
Contact us at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) is the association of the Arab region National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), as well as their strategic partners, that aims to implement, manage and extend sustainable Pan-Arab e-Infrastructures dedicated for the Research and Education communities and to boost scientific research and cooperation in member countries through the provision of world-class e-infrastructures and e-services.
West-African and French Research and Education Networks, WACREN and RENATER, have announced that they have agreed to strengthen their cooperation by making RENATER an “international member” of WACREN. This strong support of WACREN is supplemented by financial support from French organisations CIRAD and IRD to accelerate the participation of WACREN in the “AfricaConnect” project funded by the European Commission.
RENATER has been partnering with WACREN since 2011, when the first cooperation agreement between WACREN and RENATER / CIRAD / IRD was signed, with the aim to provide technical, scientific and organizational expertise for the establishment of research and education networks in this region.
By signing this new agreement for financial partnership, RENATER confirms its willingness to work with the WACREN network for its interconnection in one hand, with the Eastern and Southern African networks of the UbuntuNet Alliance especially in the framework of the “AfricaConnect”, and secondly, beyond the African continent, for joining the other components of the “Global Research Village” such as GEANT in Europe.
Patrick Donath, director of RENATER, explains that “RENATER’s mission is also to help West and Central Africa to bridge the digital divide by bringing its network expertise to promote the development of science, education and North / South cooperation within the African continent”.
Dr Boubakar Barry, CEO of WACREN, said that “this gesture of RENATER, CIRAD and IRD is much appreciated by the WACREN community. It once again demonstrates the sincerity of the cooperation with WACREN since 2011 and which has already been expressed through several joint activities. We believe that the best is yet to come, in the best interests and in the service of our communities”.
Original source: WACREN
iMENTORS (www.imentors.eu) is an interactive resource, the first of its kind, to contain information about all known e-infrastructures in Africa in the past five years. Launched for public use and input in July 2013 iMENTORS provides you with the necessary tool to visualise e-infrastructures and all related projects in Africa.
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMentors joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium, at Hotel Bloom.
AfricaConnect project aims to establish a high-capacity Internet network for research and education in Southern and Eastern Africa to provide the region with a gateway to global research collaboration. AfricaConnect builds on the roadmap prepared by the FEAST study. The project, which lasts four years, began in May 2011, and consists of two phases, the first of which is for the planning and procurement of the network, and the second is its operation.
In particular, AfricaConnect aims to:
This is the new iMETORS banner on the Gov2u homepage:
Have you used the iMENTORS opendata service and would like to share the news on your homepage?
Contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMentors joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.
OpenAIRE is the Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe which supports open access to the research output of European funded projects. The substantial technical infrastructure operates on two levels:
Muscat, Oman, December 10th – 11th, 2014
Under the Patronage of His Highness Sayyid Taimur Bin As’ad Al Said,the Arab States Research and Education Network – ASREN, is happy to announce its fourth annual event “4th International Platform on Integrating Arab e-Infrastructure in a Global Environment - e-AGE 2014” which will take place in 10-11 December 2014 in Muscat Oman. The platform will be hosted by The Research Council (TRC)of Oman.
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMENTORS joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.
Registrations (free of charge) are now open!
Agenda at a glance | Information package | Event page
Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) is the association of the Arab region National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), as well as their strategic partners, that aims to implement, manage and extend sustainable Pan-Arab e-Infrastructures dedicated for the Research and Education communities and to boost scientific research and cooperation in member countries through the provision of world-class e-infrastructures and e-services.
‘Science 2.0’ describes the on-going evolution in the modus operandi of doing research and organising science. These changes in the dynamics of science and research are enabled by digital technologies and driven by the globalisation of the scientific community, as well as the need to address the Grand Challenges of our times. They have an impact on the entire research cycle, from the inception of research to its publication, as well as on the way in which this cycle is organised.
The goal of the consultation is to better understand the full societal potential of 'Science 2.0' as well as the desirability of any possible policy action.
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMentors joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.
EUDAT is a project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and it started in October 2011 with a duration of 36 months.
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMentors joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.
CAAST-Net Plus is a network of 25 partner organisations from all over Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, working together to support bi-regional cooperation in research and innovation. Building on the activities and outputs of the CAAST-Net project (2008-2012), CAAST-Net Plus aims to:
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMENTORS joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.
The AFRICA BUILD (http://africabuild.eu) is a Coordination Action aiming to support and develop advanced Centres of Excellence in health care, education and research in the African countries, through Information Technologies. This project is supported by the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-ICT). AFRICA BUILD started 1st August 2011 and will run for a period of 36 months.
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMentors joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.
agINFRA is an Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3) project that is pioneering the connection of Agricultural Data through an Open and Participatory Data Infrastructure. In particular, the project aims to design and develop a scientific data infrastructure for agricultural sciences that will facilitate the development of policies and the deployment of services that will promote sharing of data among agricultural scientists and develop trust within and among their communities. The agINFRA Vision White Paper summarises the project’s vision as follows: “To develop a shared infrastructure and computationally empowered services for agricultural research data that allow for producing and transferring scientific and technological results into effective agricultural practice. A key element is achieving a higher level of interoperability between agricultural and other data resources”.
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.
UbuntuNet Alliance, the research and education network for Eastern and Southern Africa; and DANTE, the operator of GÉANT, the pan-European research and education network, today announce the commissioning of the UbuntuNet network, the regional high-speed Internet network connecting researchers, educators and students in Eastern and Southern Africa to their peers in the region and to Europe.
The African research and education community has for far too long carried the burden of slow Internet connectivity which has consequently widened the gap between the continent’s researchers and their peers globally. The establishment of national research and education networks (NRENs), the regional UbuntuNet Alliance, and the kick off of the AfricaConnect are milestones transforming the research and education landscape on the continent.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 313203