A memorandum of understanding (MoU), a document describing a bilateral agreement, was signed between CHAIN-REDS project and iMENTORS on June 2013 indicating an intended common line of action. The two projects have a common interest in a close co-operation in order to achieve their respective objectives. This MoU specifies the way in which such cooperation will be undertaken.

The objectives of the CHAIN-REDS project (Grant Agreement no. 306819, www.chain-project.eu) are to:
1.    Extend and consolidate the international cooperation of Europe with other regions of the world in the domain of e-Infrastructures for Research and Education, reinforcing the scientific collaboration and broadening the impact of the European Research Area;
2.    Promote, coordinate and support the effort of a critical mass of non-European e-Infrastructures for R&E to collaborate with Europe addressing interoperability and interoperation of Grids and other DCIs such as potential upcoming Cloud federations and HPC centres;
3.    Study the opportunities of data sharing across different e-Infrastructures and continents widening the scope of the existing CHAIN Knowledge Base to Data Infrastructures and Cloud implementations;
4.    Promote trust building towards open Scientific Data infrastructures across the world regions including organisational, operational and technical aspects;
5.    Demonstrate the relevance of intercontinental cooperation in several scientific data fields addressing existing and emerging Virtual Research Communities (e.g. Earth Science, Climate Change, Genomics, etc.) and propose pragmatic approaches that could impact the everyday work of the single researcher, even if not structured in a Virtual Research Community;
6.    Provide guidance and recommendations for roadmaps for long-term global collaboration in e-Infrastructures and harmonization of existing polices. These are envisaged to act as input to policy and decision-making mechanism, harmonized with European Digital Agenda and the Horizon 2020.

iMENTORS (Grant Agreement no. 313203, 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:
1.    Create a virtual observatory, acting as one-stop-shop data warehouse providing up-to-date information on all e-infrastructure related development programmes and initiatives of the past 5 years in Sub-Saharan Africa to promote the effectiveness and coherence of national and EU research policies and international cooperation in the field of research infrastructures;
2.    Develop a community of practice for support to policy development and programme implementation by creating a social hub facilitating interaction and knowledge sharing, to improve collaboration among different stakeholder groups, and offer them opportunity to create synergies and plan future projects;
3.    Build and maintain a strong stakeholder ecosystem around the iMENTORS project, which will ensure long-term viability of the project and will enhance the development of e-infrastructure in Sub Saharan Africa.

CHAIN-REDS and iMENTORS receive funding support from the European Commission in the context of its Seventh Framework Programme.

Both initiatives