iMENTORS has embarked on a number of partnerships with external partners for the purpose of data sharing and communication. A Memorandum of understanding (MoU), a document describing a bilateral agreement, was signed in March 2013 between iMENTORS and AFRICA BUILD indicating an intended common line of action. AFRICA BUILD and iMENTORS have a common interest in cooperating closely to achieve their respective objectives and promote research in Africa. The MoU specifies the way in which such cooperation will be undertaken.

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.
This support will come, in the initial phases, from established research centres located at EU countries, including WHO, the leading medical organization at a worldwide level. For later phases, a significant challenge of this CA is to generate virtual communities of African researchers that can continue these initial efforts by creating, developing and exchanging, collaboratively, new knowledge, methods, informatics tools and data. The AFRICA BUILD vision aims to address fundamental problems in health research and education in a low income geographical area like Africa, providing innovative solutions by optimizing and sharing resources through the use of novel technologies.
From a conceptual perspective AFRICA BUILD will provide the scientific, technological and financial support for developing centres of excellence in health education and research in Africa. These activities will foster the capacities and scientific excellence in the African centres and will be the starting point for future collaborative developments that will ensure sustainability once the CA ends. Experiences of the consortium in previous successful projects and initiatives will be used for the exchanges and initiatives proposed in this Coordination Action.

iMENTORS www.imentors.eu, co-funded by the European Commission’s DG CONNECT under the Seventh Framework Programme and launched in April 2012 by Stockholm University and Gov2u, released version three of its platform in December 2013. iMENTORS is a one-stop-shop data warehouse on all e-infrastructure development projects of Sub-Saharan Africa.
iMENTORS is one step closer to mapping the majority of e-infrastructure (resources, tools and data supporting community research and development) of the past five years in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to lay a foundation for better services, encourage research and connect cross-continental progress.