News & Events

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.

In the area of e-Infrastructure R&D, the importance of international cooperation cannot be underestimated. This includes both Africa/EU collaboration projects – which are key in maximizing the exploitation potential of EU and African developments – and African cross-continental collaboration – as a way of sharing tailored, locally adapted solutions with high socio-economic impact. It is imperative, therefore, that European and African CoPs collaborate, similar to the twinning between established and emerging NRENs organised by TERENA.

• Promotion of international collaboration opportunities must be continued and strengthened. It was noted that in many cases, African communities were not aware of the funding programmes (e.g. H2020) and collaboration opportunities that exist. The EGI Applications Database lists about 50 VOs, which members of the CoPs identified within eI4Africa could potentially engage with and work collaboratively and/or share resources within common disciplines. Additionally, the eI4Africa Project Wall provides a number of current or proposed projects and can help to notify the international community of proposers of the available collaboration opportunities, as well as facilitate knowledge exchange, VRC development, and capacity building;
• Collaboration starts with human networking. Building international (including EU-Africa) cooperation networks is an important step towards collaboration, as was demonstrated by the eI4Africa events, which have provided ideal forums for meeting peers and potential partners. Networking opportunities are the first step for further collaboration, including joint academic papers or joint proposals for funding;
• Efforts should be made to raise awareness of current efforts and initiatives, which constitutes a major gap in the uptake of e-Infrastructures in the continent. The need to promote e-Infrastructures development in Africa is especially important towards user communities, scientific communities, and e-Infrastructure developers;
• Africa/EU e-Infrastructure Coordination and Support Action (CSA) projects should continue to be funded, since they provide for essential networking and information exchange opportunities between African and European researchers and policy makers;

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:

• Emphasise the need for African scientists and researchers to join forces with their counterparts in other parts of the world;
• Continue raising awareness and supporting dissemination activities in order to both communicate and promote the potential of e-Infrastructures in Africa;
• Provide and engage in continuous and consistent programmes on skills and capacity building, and;
• Improve collaboration opportunities and sustain Euro-Africa cooperation.

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 next e-IRG open workshop will take place in Rome, Italy, under under the auspices of the Italian Presidency of the European Union. The event is planned from Monday 10 November 2014 at 11:00 to Tuesday 11 November 2014 at 13:00.

The opening session will include keynotes by the EC and ESFRI. The three plenary tracks are:

1. e-Infrastructure needs of the FET Flagship Initiatives in particular the Human Brain Project and the Graphene Flagship.
2. e-Infrastructure needs of ESFRI projects with examples from projects in ESFRI’s prioritisation list.
3. e-Methods addressing topics on methods and software in data management and exascale computing.

Each track will include a panel discussion providing ample opportunity for interaction with the audience. The event is open to all e-Infrastructure users, providers and policy makers. The preliminary programme of the workshop, registration and practical information can be found here.

November 24–25, 2014 Kampala, Uganda

Deploying efficient and effective infrastructures and solutions when limited resources are available is a challenging task and a key-enabler for the diffusion of ICT in developing countries. The aim of this conference is bringing together international researchers, students, public officers, policy makers and practitioners in ICT to discuss issues and trends, recent research, innovation advances and on-the-field experiences related to e-Governance, e-Infrastructure, and e-Business with a focus on developing countries.

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.

Take a look at the map!

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.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), an African Union strategic framework for pan-African socio-economic development, is both a vision and a policy framework for Africa in the twenty-first century. NEPAD is a radically new intervention, spearheaded by African leaders, to address critical challenges facing the continent: poverty, development and Africa’s marginalisation internationally.

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 10^th – 11^th, 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 “4^th 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.

The “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” Conference is taking place on October 29, 2014 at Hotel Bloom, in Brussels, Belgium. The event is jointly organised by the eI4Africa and iMENTORS EU/FP7 funded projects and it will be held under the aegis of the European Commission (DG CONNECT) and the African Union Commission.

The conference aims at bringing together policy and research stakeholders from both Europe and Africa to discuss major developments and perspectives in the field of Africa-EU e-Infrastructures cooperation. The main outcomes of the eI4Africa and iMENTORS projects will be presented on this occasion.

Over 100 European and African key stakeholders in the field (from Institutions, National and International Companies, SMEs, Academia, Research institutes, etc.) coming from all over Europe and Africa will attend the event. Registrations (free of charge) are now open!

Agenda at a glance | Information package | Event page

Co-located with the Research Data Alliance 4th Plenary Meeting, the 3rd EUDAT Conference addresses topical themes in the area of data infrastructures, including how to:

• put research communities in the driving seat of data-infrastructure development: reflections on governance models, working practices, roles and responsibilities.
• bridge national and European solutions in the area of data infrastructure and data management.

The conference will bring together policy and research stakeholders from both Europe and Africa to discuss major developments and perspectives in the field of Africa-EU e-Infrastructures cooperation. The main outcomes of the eI4Africa and iMENTORS projects will be presented on this occasion. Click for more details!

Click to see the agenda at a glance: AGENDA-AT-A-GLANCE_Joint-eI4Africa-iMENTORS-Conference.pdf