This article was first published on the UbuntuNet Alliance’s website.
The UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking is pleased to announce that it has been selected as one of the inaugural grantees of the Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) Fund for Network Adoption. The IOI Fund supports organizations working to build and scale open, community-governed, and sustainable research infrastructure. It focuses on strengthening local ownership, resilience, and the long-term viability of open digital systems, especially within regions historically underrepresented in global research infrastructure ecosystems.
UbuntuNet Alliance’s successful proposal, “Unlocking Potential: Elevating Open Institutional Repositories in Africa for Global Impact,” aligns directly with this vision by enabling African institutions to build sustainable, interoperable, and regionally hosted open science infrastructure.
Driving Continental Impact Through Open Knowledge
Across Eastern and Southern Africa, only a limited number of universities maintain functional Open Institutional Repositories (OIRs), limiting the visibility and accessibility of African research. This project will help transform that landscape by expanding repository infrastructure, strengthening human capacity, and improving how African research outputs are shared with the world.
Key anticipated impacts include:
Greater global visibility for African research: Strengthened and newly created OIRs, together with AfricArXiv’s expanded role as a regional metadata aggregator, will significantly increase the discoverability and reuse of African scholarship.
Increased local capacity and skills: More than 1,000 librarians, researchers and system engineers across the UbuntuNet Alliance 16 member countries will be trained in repository management, open data stewardship, and metadata standards, strengthening institutional self-reliance.
Better access to high-quality African datasets: By supporting the creation and curation of 960+ open datasets, the project will help fill Africa’s persistent data gaps and improve evidence-based research and policymaking.
A strengthened networked ecosystem for open science: Through AfricArXiv, the project will aggregate hundreds of thousands of metadata records, ensuring African outputs are visible in global discovery systems.
Collaboration at the Heart of the Project
The project is built on strong collaboration between UbuntuNet Alliance, its member NRENs, and global partners including Access 2 Perspectives (A2P), Harvard University’s IQSS, eScire Iberoamérica, CLIR, and the HBCU Library Alliance.
The Critical Role of NRENs in the Project
NRENs are central actors in delivering this project and ensuring that its outcomes are locally owned and sustainable. As outlined in the proposal:
- NRENs will lead national implementation teams, coordinated by their CEOs, overseeing rollout across 16 countries.
- They will host and operate DSpace-as-a-Service (DSaaS), providing secure, affordable, and locally managed repository infrastructure to their member institutions.
- NRENs will drive national capacity building, nominating participants, coordinating in-country trainings, and supporting institutions as they establish or strengthen their repositories.
- Their technical staff—system engineers—will receive specialist training, enabling them to become long-term stewards of national repository infrastructure.
- NRENs will develop sustainable business models for DSaaS to ensure the service continues beyond the project’s lifespan.
These roles place NRENs at the centre of both implementation and long-term sustainability, empowering them to champion open science infrastructure within their national ecosystems.
A Continental Vision for Open Science
Through this initiative, UbuntuNet Alliance and its partners will help ensure that African research is discoverable, preserved, and globally connected, while supporting institutions to adopt sustainable open science practices. The Alliance looks forward to working with its member NRENs and collaborators to advance an open, equitable, and impactful future for African research.
