News & Events

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:

• Encourage more and better bi-regional STI cooperation for enhanced outcomes around topics of mutual interest, and particularly in relation to the global societal challenges of climate change, food security and health.
• Foster discussion among stakeholders for gathering informed opinion and experience about the bi-regional cooperation process, formulating and disseminating it in such a way as to be admissible to the formal bi-regional STI policy dialogue process and to programme owners.

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.

According to an article published on Edutech, a World Bank blog on ICT and Education, in most countries around the world, a single institution is core to the implementation of national initiatives related to the use of new technologies ('ICTs') in education. Whether we are talking about large scale rollouts of things like tablets or laptops, or educational computing efforts of the more 'traditional' variety, a single organization often serves as a focal point for many related efforts to introduce, support, maintain direct, coordinate, fund, manage and/or evaluate national efforts to utilize information and communications technologies (ICTs) in innovative -- and, if we are honest with ourselves, perhaps not so innovative -- ways in schools.

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.

Louis Papaemmanuel, Project Director of iMENTORS, SU, presented iMENTORS at the IST-Africa Conference (06 - 09 May, Mauritius) during Session 8d: eInfrastructures (08 May). IST-Africa 2014 focused on the Role of ICT for Africa's Development and specifically on Applied ICT research in the areas of eHealth, Technology Enhanced Learning and ICT Skills, Digital Libraries, Open Source Software, eInfrastructures, Societal Implications of Technology and eGovernment.

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.

Louis Papaemmanuel explained how using iMENTORS and open aid data enhances the coherence of international aid. Data acquisition and validation will continue to progress until the end of the project. By the end of the project the interactive system will contain at least 80% of all e-infrastructure available in Africa. 

Louis Papaemmanuel, Project Director of iMENTORS, SU, will present iMENTORS at the IST-Africa Conference during Session 8d: eInfrastructures (Thursday, May 08, 2014). He will explain how using iMENTORS and open aid data enhances the coherence of international aid. IST-Africa 2014 is taking place in Mauritius (06 - 09 May) and is the ninth in an annual series of Ministerial Level Technology Research Conferences.

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.

More than ever before, Africans are turning to ICT-supported learning to grow their economies. In 2013, the eLearning Africa Report found that 40% of African technology-assisted learning professionals were using ICTs specifically for skills training, up from 18% the previous year.

Photographs Denize Nasilowski © ICWE GmbH

The benefit of ICT-supported learning is that it allows employers to provide vocational training to a great number of workers for little cost. This year’s eLearning Africa, 28th – 30th May in Kampala, Uganda, will explore how technology  is revolutionising  learning and training across the continent, under the theme “Opening Frontiers to the Future”.

eChallenges e-2014 Conference and Exhibition
29 - 31 October 2014, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Hosted by the Government of Mauritius through the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and the National Computer Board, and Supported by the European Commission (EC) and African Union Commission (AUC), IST-Africa 2014 (06 - 09 May) is the ninth in an annual series of Ministerial Level Technology Research Conferences.

iMENTORS is mapping terrestrial networks in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The goal is to identify areas on the map underserved by network operators and providers.  These areas also represent good opportunities for governments and the private sector to invest in e-infrastructure projects. 

Image courtesy of ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

24 April 2014, Brussels

The Future has begun. Member States and regions must lose no time in preparing the next generation of EU programmes for growth, says Commissioner Hahn after MEPs' vote on radical reform of EU Regional Policy in July 2013.

iMENTORS is able to synchronize its data with other databases, fully utilizing Open Data and  Web 2.0 interconnectivity. Our development team has created API processes to include information from CORDIS and the World Bank database, in order to create the largest online repository of eInfrastructure data. 

Join us, learn about eInfrastructure projects in the area you are interested in and contribute your own information to our constantly growing database!

Image courtesy of cooldesign / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The iMENTORS e- newsletter keeps you abreast of any new project developments and relevant topics.

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iMENTORS statistics have now been completed for all data recorded up until Dec. 15th!  During the last recording period, we added a total of 1398 new organizations and 413 new projects to our database, an increase over the last recording period of approximately 67% and 290%, respectively.  In addition, we recorded 330 research infrastructures - a brand new category of information now uploaded and available for search in the iMENTORS database. 

Is your organization among the new additions to the iMENTORS database?  Check our map today!

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The latest addition to the iMENTORS database is the Connect 4 Change project.  Connect 4 Change is a consortium of five Dutch development and ICT organizations collaborating to accelerate the realization of the Millennium Development Goals through the use of ICT. The program supports ICT initiatives in the areas of education, health and agricultural and economic development, and members of the consortium have funded nearly sixty different ICT projects in Africa. The consortium works with local partners in many different countries, including Burkino Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

Image courtesy of cooldesign at 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.

Access and make creative use of the huge amount of data available!

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.

We are working on streamlining the user interaction process of the "what-if" analysis functionality, which allows investigating effects of contextual factors on ICT4D projects. We aim to make the developed simulation tool easy to comprehend and to use.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

According to an announcement published on isgtw, the Human Brain Project (HBP) is a major EU-funded international neuroscience and ICT research initiative, which was launched earlier this year. Its High-Performance Computing Platform Subproject, run by Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, is inviting all interested potential suppliers to an "Open Dialogue on Pre-Commercial Procurement". Participants will meet with the HBP's HPC team in Brussels on 18 December 2013 to discuss technical challenges raised by this ambitious project, as well as practical implementation issues.

The Human Brain Project (HBP) is a large-scale, European-led scientific collaborative project, which aims to gather all existing knowledge about the human brain, build multi-scale models of the brain that integrate this knowledge and use these models to simulate the brain on supercomputers. The resulting “virtual brain” offers the prospect of a fundamentally new and improved understanding of the human brain, opening the way for better treatments for brain diseases and for novel, brain-like computing technologies.

Image courtesy of digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net