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.

Co-funded by the European Commission’s DG CONNECT under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and launched in April 2012 by SPIDER at Stockholm University and Gov2u, iMENTORS is an interactive resource, first of its kind, to contain information about all known e-infrastructures in Africa in the past five years.

“New data is entered into iMENTORS’ interactive map each week. By the end of the project our interactive system will contain at least 80% of all e-infrastructure available in Africa.  The second component of the Decision Support System (‘what if’ analyses) is ready for the third version of the platform and submarine cables and terrestrial networks have been added to the map. The past few months the collection of data for the iMENTORS database focused on optimizing a method for recording these last-mile terrestrial networks, many of which are on-going projects.”

Louis Papaemmanuel, Director of the iMENTORS project

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 Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) proposals ahead of their implementation by estimating their potential impact. The decision support feature of the iMENTORS platform has a method for conducting what-if analyses with respect to changes in the levels of required contextual factors such as analphabetism, internet speed, etc. Users can easily sign in using their LinkedIn credentials, put their projects on the map and increase their project’s visibility.

See post on ei4africa.eu