News & Events

Making information about aid spending easier to access, use and understand

iMENTORS has opened its data to all unregistered users in its last six months of operation. It is important that donors provide information about the aid they give. More important though is for the information to be publicly available in a way that people can easily understand. iMENTORS (www.imentors.eu) is the most comprehensive data map on ICT investments in Africa and contains data across a multitude of entities, classified as organisations, research infrastructures, fibre networks and projects.

Monitoring & evaluation (M&E) is an integral part of the life-cycle approach underlying RBM (see Figure below). M&E provide invaluable information for decision-making and lessons learned for the future (United Nations Development Group 2011).

iMENTORS team for Platform customization and integration has been working on the method for performing 'what-if' analyses in the context of e-infrastructure projects as well as on a method for following-up on ongoing projects relative to the expectations outlined in its early proposal stage.

The method is generalized into a method for project risk-opportunity analysis monitoring the state of expected threat to project success and expected favour to the project given that external factors develop in different ways (factors such as mobile internet speed, analphabetism, Internet dissemination).

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

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

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.

Image courtesy of renjith krishnan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The method for what-if analysis included in the decision support system of iMENTORS has now been developed. The approach of the what-if analysis is that the outcomes of any ICT4D initiative are dependent on a set of important contextual factors, such as internet dissemination etc.

Athina Vrakatseli, project Dissemination and Sustainability leader, demonstrated how the iMENTORS platform optimizes donors' ICT4D interventions in Africa during the training and final meeting that EuroRIs-Net+ organised on 16-17 September, in Athens. Click here to see the presentation

iMENTORS demonstration:

Stakeholders were impressed by the project. The demonstration was followed by a discussion on the timeline of the project and data collection.

The iMENTORS project underwent its 1st periodic review on September 9th by the European Commission and independent experts. The project received the highest grade- excellent- and it is on good track to achieving its objectives. The iMENTORS team is engaged with incorporating the recommendations and is highly pleased with the outcome of the review.

The Spider ICT4D seminar series aims to collect and share ICT4D knowledge from around the world. Speakers in the series are well established scholars, practitioners or activists, who share their views and experiences on a broad range of topics, including Spider's thematic areas of democracy, education, and health.

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

This edition of the iMENTORS newsletter gives you more in-depth insights into current issues in the world of e-infrastructure, research infrastructure, national /regional research and education networks, ICT and data. Read it online!