News & Events

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.

According to an article published on IT NEWS AFRICA, almost 90% of CEOs in Africa plan to increase investment in technology in 2014 and position technology amongst the top three considerations, claim media reports covering research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

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PwC’s 16^th Annual Global CEO Survey reveals that the perception of technology amongst senior executives is that it is an easy enabler of agility and growth because it helps with risk management and skills development and retention.

According to an article published on IT NEWS AFRICA, with South African media reports claiming that space is limited at public tertiary education institutions, the reality facing many who have matriculated is that whilst their efforts may have earned university exemption, they may not necessarily have secured a place.

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.

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According to an article published on IT NEWS AFRICA, ith the year wrapping up and companies looking toward 2014, Jay Kidd, Chief Technology Officer and senior vice president at NetApp, gives his predictions for 2014 and the trends that will impact the industry including flash, cloud, and software-defined. He also takes a look back at 2013 and the predictions that came true.

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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).

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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.

iMENTORS is hosting  a workshop with the e-infrastructure stakeholders in Africa, to collect input and encourage the crowdsourcing efforts and participation on the platform.

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This edition of the 'Africa-EU Cooperation Forum on ICT' (Dec. 2-3, 2013) is held in the framework of the AUC Internet/ICT Week and is taking place this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

This generation of young African women is the most ambitious yet. They are eager to build industries, reform societies, save lives, rewrite history, and transform the 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.

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iMENTORS’ Research Infrastructures (RIs) database is  the first centralised portal of all high level  research facilities and information sources in Africa or hosted elsewhere but focusing on Africa.

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Research infrastructures refers to any facilities, resources or related services that are used or could be used by the scientific community to conduct top level research in their various disciplines. We are currently gathering all accessible information regarding RIs in Africa and would like your support. If you have any relevant information, please contact iMentors to help create an exhaustive database. Better still, you can update the database yourself at www.imentors.eu   

Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills, has placed great emphasis on the catalytic role of ICT in education and development. It was therefore a great opportunity for the participants to the Joint eI4Africa / CHAIN-REDS workshop to gather in Kigali, share their experiences and learn from each other and the local hosts.

The eI4Africa and CHAIN-REDS EU/FP7 projects have a common interest in promoting the adoption of consolidated standards, both in the e-Infrastructure and certification authorities and Federated Identity services domains, with the ultimate aim of widening the number of potential users of e-Infrastructures in Africa.

The added value of iMENTORS lies in its’ decision- support with the evaluation module to assess ongoing projects and in the contextual factors analysis which enables iMENTORS to assess ICT4D proposals ahead of their implementation by estimating their potential impact.

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An article about iMENTORS was published yesterday on Techy Africa, a very popular technology blog in Ghana.

Techy Africa is a community that seeks to promote Startup Culture and Entrepreneurship in Software in Africa.

iMENTORS has identified and recorded 58 submarine cables into and out of the African continent.  This amounts to over 450,000 km of cable, and over 150 different organizations involved in the funding and operation of the cables. 

The challenge now for Africa is to develop local fiber optic networks to connect these from high-capacity international submarine cables all the way to the home.

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According to an article published on IT NEWS AFRICA, Nigerian development consultant Nnenna Nwakanma has joined the World Wide Web Foundation’s growing international network as Africa Regional Coordinator.

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The collection of data for the iMENTORS database is currently focused on donor databases and international submarine cable networks.

Nearly 2000 organizations involved in ICT projects are already mapped and recorded in the iMENTORS database which launched the beta version in July. Users can easily sign in using their LinkedIn credentials, put their projects on the map and increase their project’s visibility. The aim is for the platform to contain 80 percent of e-infrastructure projects/investment frameworks by the end of the project using an advanced geographic information and visualization system.

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.