WACREN and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enhance scientific and scholarly communication in Africa, through the AfricaConnect3 project and the LIBSENSE initiative.

This cooperation is underlined by the common interests and values of the two parties.

Under this MoU, the parties agree to collaborate in LIBSENSE to provide contemporary platforms to enable agriculture research data sharing and open access publishing.  As part of the collaboration, training on research data management will be developed as repeatable open education resources (OER) for RUFORUM researchers and librarians.

In his remarks, the CEO for WACREN, Dr. Boubakar Barry, said the cooperation outcomes would impact the research output of agriculture scientists and researchers and higher education institutions in general significantly.

“Africa still contributes just a little fraction of the world’s research output. This cooperation with RUFORUM is a step in the direction in the sense that it would help our native agriculture researchers to access valuable open resources to engage with in their scientific discovery“, Dr. Barry said.

Professor Adipala Ekwamu, the Executive Secretary of RUFORUM said that “this agreement furthers RUFORUM’s aspiration of becoming a knowledge hub for research and innovation in agriculture and rural development in Africa. RUFORUM has always aspired to harness the role of digital technologies in making research outputs and learning materials available for researchers, students and other stakeholders and this partnership aims to achieve this aspiration. RUFORUM looks forward to a fruitful collaboration with WACREN ”

Throughout the initial agreement’s lifetime (2021 to 2023), the two parties agree to exchange knowledge, experiences and find opportunities that are of common interest to the two parties and the end-users in general.

Under the MoU, WACREN and RUFORUM agree to leverage the capacities of their networks – human, technical and financial resources – to ensure the successful implementation of the agreement.

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