News & Events

Theme: Infrastructure – Innovation – Inclusion

Authors are invited to submit 500 word abstracts for presentation at UbuntuNet-Connect 2014, the 7th Annual Conference of the UbuntuNet Alliance. The UbuntuNet-Connect series of conferences has been held for the past 6 years and is regarded as one of the premier conferences in Africa. This year the conference will take place from 13 to 14 November 2014 in Lusaka, Zambia and will be hosted by Zambia Research and Education Network (ZAMREN), the NREN of Zambia.

Have you ever needed to transfer large amounts of data between different distributed computing infrastructure (DCI) storage resources? This is necessary if, for example, an experiment runs on an infrastructure that is different from the one where the data is stored. In such cases, the data needs to be transferred rapidly from the original storage location to the storage location of the compute resource.

Focused on cost-effective access to high-capacity bandwidth, connectivity and services, the conference will bring together members of the community, decision and policy makers, international partners and communication services providers to get updates from the various NRENs in the region and discuss infrastructure, interconnection and other technical issues.

Last month, local OpenStack users from France and Switzerland held a meeting at CERN. iSGTW discusses the event with Tim Bell, a member of the OpenStack management board and leader of the Operating Systems and Infrastructure Services groupwithin CERN’s IT department. Bell explains the vital role OpenStackplays in enabling CERN to flexibly tailor its computing resources to meet demand, as well as its importance for other organizations across the globe…

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

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.

Accoridng to an article published on The African Business Review, Africa suffers from a critical shortage of infrastructure. Its infrastructure coverage lags behind other developing countries, with power deficits presenting the biggest infrastructure challenge. The infrastructure deficit prevents Africa from reaching its full economic potential.

Louis Papaemmanuel, Project Director of iMENTORS, SU, presented today iMENTORS at the UNESCO HP-BGI meeting. 

He demonstrated how the iMENTORS platform optimizes donors' ICT4D interventions in Africa. Stream it live: http://bit.ly/tqMX1H

The UNESCO-HP Brain Gain Initiative fosters cooperation across borders among students, academics and scientists from Africa and the Arab States, and helps strengthen research capacities of higher education institutions in the two regions.

 It was an opportunity to meet and exchange with partners (representatives from 19 projects, in 14 countries), as well as with stakeholders in the two regions. The activity served as well to highlight the projects' achievements and to reflect together on the way forward.

DANTE has completed a major network upgrade to GEANT, the superfast pan-European data communications infrastructure that interconnects National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). GEANT is relied on by more than 50 million of Europe's research and education users and this 2Tbps (terabits per second) upgrade is set to further boost the research, innovation and education that is driving Europe's recovery.

The PRACE Scientific Conference 2013, organized by the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) takes place on Sunday, 16 June, in Leipzig, Germany at the Congress Center Leipzig, Hall 4.

The PRACE Annual Report 2012 is now available for download and online reading

http://www.prace-ri.eu/PRACE-Annual-Report

The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association offers a forum to collaborate, innovate and share knowledge in order to foster the development of Internet technology, infrastructure and services to be used by the research and education community.

Click here to view the TERENA Annual Report 2012

EU, US and Australia aim to create ‘internet’ of research data

Funders in Australia, the EU and the United States have launched the Research Data Alliance, in a determined effort to enhance science data sharing worldwide.

The alliance will seek to bring together working researchers with a plethora of existing national and global initiatives across all disciplines. It says it intends to develop global, interoperable data infrastructure and promote standards and practices to make it easier and faster for scientists to share, use and reuse data.

Welcome to the second issue of the quarterly iMENTORS newsletter! In this edition of our newsletter, our team shares the latest updates on iMENTORS, upcoming events and interesting news that have caught our interest.

News include inter alia:

• Euro-African collaboration on ICT research
• Africa: A Story of Growth
  
  
• What lies in store for African Internet in 2013? What are your predictions for 2013?
• Infrastructure and skills challenges hold back Zim’s ICT sector

Read more on the online version of our newsletter!

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More steady progress, no doubt. But we must remember there is no typical African Internet user. Levels of engagement with digital content vary widely by region, country, and city. Just because a few hundred individuals in a city are creating successful start-ups doesn’t mean the majority of the population even has Internet access. At the same time, progress necessitates a core group of early adopters who can achieve “trickle-down” innovation.

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

• Read the first issue online: http://www.imentors.eu/newsletter/1/index.html
• Do not forget to register via this form: http://www.imentors.eu/newsletter.html
• Please forward the link to your contacts!

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