Erina4Africa · Exploiting Research INfrastructures potentiAl for boosting Research and Innovation in Africa

ERINA4Africa is an initiative aimed at fostering cooperation between the EU and Africa with a win-win perspective: 1) Africa may benefit from the development of Research Infrastructure policies based on EU experiences and best practices, and 2) the EU will have the chance to demonstrate on-the-field benefits of exploiting Research Infrastructure in key ICT areas where public funding would be relevant, namely e-Government, e-Health and e-Learning.<br/>Based on the results of a recent study funded by the EC (ERINA, www.erina-study.eu), this proposal aims to provide African and EU policy makers with a detailed analysis of exploitable scenarios of existing (and new) e-Infrastructures in Africa, by means of:<br/>1.\tA virtual observatory on trends and current evolution of e-Infrastructures in Africa, including a strict relation with academic as well as industrial communities, with the perspective of gathering concrete requirements to boost Academic and Industrial research.2.\tA foresight study identifying qualitative as well as quantitative benefits in adopting African Research Infrastructures as basic building blocks for other key IST areas (the qualitative analysis and the methodology were developed in the former ERINA study).3.\tA series of virtual conferences and local meetings to both promote and validate the project results.<br/>The project activities will allow the actors of the African e-Infrastructures ecosystems to network and share knowledge, and will foster easier communications and dissemination between the EU and Africa on an ongoing basis.<br/>Moreover ERINA4Africa has a green core. It will be managed to monitor and reduce as much as possible any paper usage, travelling alongside the world and energy consumption in general. This collateral exercise would demonstrate the possibility to have efficient while green research. Through the web site such metrics will be continuously monitored, providing concrete suggestions to reduce the impact of research projects