News & Events

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

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  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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.

27 February 2014, Paris

"Mapping European Competitiveness" (MAPCOMPETE) is a FP7 proposal of six European universities and research centers (from Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Hungary) to provide an assessment of data opportunities and requirements for the analysis of comparative competitiveness in European countries.

The dawn of the final launch of a new and comprehensive database on einfrastructures across Africa is steadily approaching. After a successful initial round of data extraction and recording, the iMENTORS team has now embarked on the validation of the information, in addition to further data collection regarding any infrastructures that are not yet recorded in the system.

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Louis Papaemmanuel, Director of the iMENTORS project was invited to speak at the Headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, in the framework of the AUC Internet/ICT Week held on Dec. 2-6 2013. The week is part of a series of events organised to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) / African Union (AU).

Image courtesy of Kookkai_nak at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

iMENTORS version three went live today and 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. The aim of iMENTORS is to help scientists, universities, research and education networks as well as policy-makers and international funders to gain valuable insights on the gaps and progress made in the region and to identify synergies when planning future ICT initiatives within the African continent.

The last issue of the CHAIN-REDS e-Newsletter is now online!Click here to read it

According to an article published on iSGTW, last week iSGTW has been at the EUDAT Second Conference in Rome, Italy. EUDAT, which is funded under the European Commission's FP7 scheme, seeks to support a collaborative data infrastructure which will allow researchers to share data within and between communities and enable them to carry out their research effectively.

iMENTORS (also funded under FP7) has been busy recording the IST-Africa project and related FP7 projects. iMENTORS enables organizations to connect with each other, share resources and link their ICT4D project proposal to the past or on-going projects.

Athina Vrakatseli, project Dissemination and Sustainability leader, will demonstrate how the iMENTORS platform optimizes donors' ICT4D interventions in Africa during the training and final meeting that EuroRIs-Net+ is organising on 16-17 September, in Athens.
iMENTORS went live and is one step closer to becoming the most comprehensive crowdsourcing map on ICT infrastructures in Sub-Saharan Africa! Register and create your profile on the platform. Do not forget to send us your feedback on the beta version of the platform! Check out the map now: www.imentors.eu/map.html

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.

iMENTORS has started to map in a virtual observatory the levels of connectivity, types of networks, data infrastructures, e-tools, and projects, etc. that are currently available for researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa. 
iMENTORS, an FP-7 funded project launched in April 2012 by Stockholm University and Gov2u, is a web-based platform serving as a knowledge repository for sharing and aggregating data on e-infrastructure projects throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The platform is going live on 15 July.

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According to an article published on EPSI Platform website,  EPSI Platform has published a report about the relation of EU funding with open data and PSI initiatives across Europe. The report provides a good overview on what projects and initiatives have been funded by the European Commission during the past years related to the major programmes for research and innovation in Europe (the 7th Framework Programme – FP7 and Competitiveness and Innovation Programme – CIP).