On March 11-12, 2019, COAR also participated in the second Libsense workshop organized by WACREN (West and Central African Research and Education Network). The program was developed by WACREN, EIFL and COAR, with support from OpenAIRE and the National Institutes for Informatics (NII) in Japan.

The LIBSENSE initiative aims to nurture and develop collaborations between Libraries and Research and Education Networks (RENs) in Africa to support open science activities. The idea is that the sustainability and effectiveness of open science services in African countries, such as repositories, can be improved if stakeholders can adopt a shared approach.

This second workshop focused on finalizing and endorsing a template Terms of Reference (ToRs) for collaborative activities between library or library associations with national or regional RENs, which outlines four areas: social change, infrastructure, capacity building, and value added services. Participants in the workshop, who mainly came from west and central african countries, broke out into national groups and discussed how the terms of reference could be implemented in each of their countries, and identified their local priorities.

One concrete outcome that has already resulted from this initiative is the intention of WACREN to develop a shared hosting service for repositories in that region. This service is modeled on the approach of NII in Japan that is currently hosting over 700 university repositories. Other shared activities that were prioritized by the participants were: capacity building and training, policy templates and development, and repository harvesting and discovery, and amplifying success stories. In addition, adoption of a harvester to provide a discovery service for African research outputs, a shared publication platform, and looking at the models for next generation repositories that might be appropriate in the African context.

Thanks to Omo Oaiya and Dr Boubakar Barry from WACREN, Iryna Kuchma from EIFL, and our local Ghanaian hosts, especially Peter Kaba Adaliwe. The next workshop will take place in April in Tunis, Tunisia in conjunction with the ASREN Conference (Arab States Education and Research Network).