Advocacy and Donor Engagement

To emphasise the role of digital tools in the transformation of education and research and their multiplier effect in terms of skills development, employability and economic growth, the partners will set up an advocacy and donor engagement campaign targeted at decision makers as well as at international donors and other stakeholders to influence policy change and mobilise funding.

The RRENs will gather evidence and issues arising in the procurement of connectivity and cloud implementation in the three regions and compile country fiches in the form of country profiles including background research. This will contribute to enhancing the NRENs’ visibility, towards supporting the development of a pan-African advocacy plan and the donor engagement strategy.

AfriGEO and GMES Communities

Through AfricaConnect3, the partners will support engagement with user communities and more specifically Earth Observation communities in Africa: “GMES in Africa” (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) and AfriGEO (African Group on Earth Observation).

GMES is an initiative of the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) that is aimed at providing reliable and timely services related to environmental and security issues in support of users and public policy makers’ needs. “GMES in Africa” being the extension of the Copernicus project in Africa, GÉANT will support the African partners in interactions with ESA and EUMETSAT.

Both the GMES and AfriGEO initiatives work support decision making through the provision of coordinated, comprehensive and sustained information and require high bandwidth with high-quality connectivity to be able to exchange, share and process data.