Overview
Duration: Ongoing
Team: Katherine Skinner, Kaitlin Thaney, Jerry Sellanga, Lauren Collister
Funders: Wellcome, Digital Science, Arcadia, Karger Publishers Foundation, Kahle Austin Foundation, EBSCO, Lyrasis
Skillset: Business Development Advisory, Capacity Building, Collective Funding
Research from across Africa is growing in volume, ambition, and relevance, and the world benefits every time it becomes easier to find. Open institutional repositories make that happen, keeping scholarship discoverable, citable, and preserved for the long term.
UbuntuNet Alliance is well positioned to build that repository layer at regional scale. Its 16 National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) serve roughly 846 institutions across Eastern and Southern Africa, and they hold something no other provider can replicate: deep trust within their research communities. The Alliance's proposal to the IOI Fund for Network Adoption stood out from more than 100 applications across 22 countries for its ambition and its practicality in equal measure.
What the project will do
Its member NRENs, with coordination by UbuntuNet Alliance, will roll out DSpace as a managed cloud service, giving institutions repository services on infrastructure they already know and trust. More than 560 librarians will train as repository managers and metadata librarians, creating or strengthening over 400 open institutional repositories across the region.
The project will also build out AfricArXiv as a pan-African aggregator for open research metadata, and train more than 450 data management champions to support a target of over 960 curated open datasets that can be cited, discovered, and reused worldwide.
Where IOI comes in
The strongest open infrastructure pairs good funding with a solid business model, sound governance, and a community that owns it. That's why the Fund was designed to deliver both. Every grant comes with hands-on strategic support, and that's where our work with UbuntuNet Alliance is focused.
- Business planning that fits the region: We're running business planning workshops and training with NRENs across Eastern and Southern Africa, drawing on IOI's experience in nonprofit revenue models, collective funding approaches, and funder diversification. The goal is for each network to develop a sustainable model that serves its library and researcher communities well beyond the grant period.
- Listening before designing: We're conducting interviews across the region to build a deeper understanding of local needs and trends in repository development, so that business models and services reflect what institutions actually want rather than assumptions about what they need.
- Connecting to the global community: DSpace is a mature open-source platform with an active worldwide community and established governance. We're connecting UbuntuNet Alliance directly into that community, so the region's voice shapes the platform's direction and UbuntuNet Alliance's teams can draw on global expertise.
What’s next?
By the end of the project, the region will have a trusted metadata aggregator of its own, hundreds of new and strengthened repositories, and NRENs equipped with the business models to sustain these services for the long haul. The work aligns with the African Union's Agenda 2063 and the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, and it strengthens South-South research collaboration in the process.
The larger outcome is the one that matters most: African scholarship that is visible, valued, and verifiable, available on infrastructure that the region's own institutions run and govern.
Building something at network scale?
Networks and consortia hold a kind of trust that makes open infrastructure adoption move faster and stick. If your network is thinking about how to scale repository services, strengthen sustainability, or connect with funders who back this work, we would love to talk. Reach out to learn more about the IOI Fund for Network Adoption and what integrated funding and strategic support can look like.
