First steps towards an UofK IR at the Open Access Africa Conference (Kenya, Nairobi, Nov'2010)

The first steps towards establishing an institutional repository for the University of Khartoum were taken last November at the 1st Open Access Africa Conference held at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Nairobi, Kenya. Over a hundred participants coming mainly from Eastern African countries met there in a highly cooperative environment for a two-day debate on the challenges Open Access faces and the opportunities it offers in developing countries and especially in Africa. Plenty of new professional contacts were made along those two days, and a handful of plans for future cooperation for promotion of Open Access initiatives (both in terms of OA journals and repositories) were sketched between sessions in the JKUAT corridors. Plans for setting up an Open Access institutional repository for the Faculty of Science at the University of Khartoum in Sudan are the outcome of the OAA-resulting partnership between UofK and Carlos III University Madrid(UC3M), Spain.