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.

agINFRA is an Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3) project that is pioneering the connection of Agricultural Data through an Open and Participatory Data Infrastructure. In particular, the project aims to design and develop a scientific data infrastructure for agricultural sciences that will facilitate the development of policies and the deployment of services that will promote sharing of data among agricultural scientists and develop trust within and among their communities. The agINFRA Vision White Paper summarises the project’s vision as follows: “To develop a shared infrastructure and computationally empowered services for agricultural research data that allow for producing and transferring scientific and technological results into effective agricultural practice. A key element is achieving a higher level of interoperability between agricultural and other data resources”.

In more detail this means:

• Shared e-Infrastructure tools and services: agINFRA develops and makes available shared e-infrastructure for agricultural research resources (content/data) and services;
• Higher interoperability of data: agINFRA promotes a higher level of interoperability between agricultural and other data resources (e.g. through deploying Linked Data methods);
• Improved research data services: agINFRA allows for service improvement so that agricultural researchers can produce and transfer novel scientific and technological results for effective outcomes in the agricultural sector.

The agINFRA project is funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and it started in October 2011 with a duration of 36 months.

The “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” Conference at a glance.