The African Open Science Platform project aims to coordinate open science activities across Africa through establishing core data infrastructure and building capacity. It conducted a landscape study of existing initiatives and engaged stakeholders to develop frameworks for open science policy, data infrastructure, skills development, and incentives. The next phase will launch an open science platform to register African data initiatives, provide network and computing resources, support FAIR data practices, establish a data science institute, and develop education networks - advancing open science across the continent.

1. Data Driving Sustainability – the African
Open Science Platform Project
Presented by Ina Smith
Project Manager African Open Science Platform
DOAJ Ambassador

2. Rationale – Data Driven World

3. Fake Data, Fake Research
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39357819

5. Slide Credit: Laura Merson, IDDO
Ebola Outbreak 2014-15

6. Slide Credit: Laura Merson, IDDO
After the Outbreak Post 2015

7. http://www.nature.com/news/data-sharing-make-outbreak-
research-open-access-1.16966

8. Repatriation of Data

9. Intellectual Property Rights Policy
“In many African countries, intellectual property
protection is undeveloped, ineffective,
expensive and unenforced and in some African
countries there exists uncertainty on protection
of IP and the threat of innovation being stolen
away from inventors.”
https://ipstrategy.com/2016/12/05/a-new-look-at-intellectual-property-and-
innovation-in-africa/

10. Trusted Research & Data
• Trust and credibility are at the centre of the
process of science
• Trusted research & researchers who have your
best interest at heart
• Build new research on existing research/data
• To be trusted, it needs to be managed

11. Open Science Defined
“Open Science is the practice of science in such a
way that others can collaborate and contribute,
where research data, lab notes and other
research processes are freely available, under
terms that enable reuse, redistribution and
reproduction of the research and its
underlying data and methods.” - FOSTER Project,
funded by the European Commission

12. Open Data, Open Science &
Research Lifecycle (Foster)
Data

13. Original Research Data Lifecycle image from University of California, Santa Cruz
http://guides.library.ucsc.edu/datamanagement/
Repositories
Repositories
Tools
Gold/Green OA
Plan
Policy.Infrastructure,Capacity&Skills,Incentives

14. Benefits of open data
• Provide evidence for research conducted
• Collaboration advances science, discovery
• Predict trends & informed decisions
• Drive development, service delivery
• More entrepreneurs – using data in innovative
ways, create jobs
• Have potentially far more outcomes when open,
higher impact
• Identify gaps in research – attrack funders
• Democratising research & data towards achieving
2030 Sustainable Development Goals

16. SDG UN Examples African Examples/Initiatives/Projects
No Poverty Spending patterns on mobile
phone services can provide
proxy indicators of income
levels.
DataFirst e.g. data quality of
household surveys, and the analysis
of inequality and labour markets in
South Africa (Prof Martin Wittenberg).
Zero Hunger Crowdsourcing or tracking of
food prices listed online can
help monitor food security in
near real-time.
Agricultural Science Technology
Indicators (ASTI) Kenya Data - Open-
access data and analysis on
agricultural research investment and
capacity in low- and middle-income
countries.
Good health
& Well-being
Mapping the movement of
mobile phone users can help
predict the spread of infectious
diseases.
H3ABioNet - Develop a core
bioinformatics infrastructure
(hardware and human resources) to
aid research in genomic medicine,
high throughput biology, systems
biology, genetics, and medicine, for
the study of human heredity and
health.
MURIA - access to data to address
challenges to current drug utilisation
research in Africa.

17. SDG UN Examples African Examples/Initiatives/Projects
Quality
Education
Citizen reporting can reveal
reasons for student drop-out
rates.
Kenya Open Data Portal provides
data on location of key infrastructure
including health facilities, schools,
water and electricity. Data maps used
to increase access to education
(Kenya).
Gender
Equality
Analysis of financial
transactions can reveal the
spending patterns and different
impacts of economic shocks on
men and women.
African Development Bank Equality
Index to help inform policymaking to
further mainstream gender, which will
lead to more inclusive growth. Most
comprehensive assessment of the
state of gender equality on the
continent, examining the role of
women as producers, economic
agents, in human development, and
as leaders in public life.
Clean Water
and
Sanitation
Sensors connected to water
pumps can track access to
clean water.
South Africa Data Portal provides
public information on water.
Aquastat - % fresh water a country
could sustainably provide vs actually
consumed there.

18. SDG UN Examples African Examples/Initiatives/Projects
Affordable
and Clean
Energy
Smart metering allows utility
companies to increase or
restrict the flow of electricity,
gas or water to reduce waste
and ensure adequate supply at
peak periods.
Integrated Waste Management Plan
Toolkit consists of interactive data
forms with information about
demographic population and waste.
Provides situation analysis data for
municipality in table and graph
format.
WIMEA-ICT a collaborative effort at
improving weather information
management in East Africa.
iGRID - a Smart Grid Capacity
Development and Enhancement to
improve delivery efficiency and to
optimize operational costs in the
electrical power system in Tanzania.
Decent Work
and Economic
Growth
Patterns in global postal traffic
can provide indicators such as
economic growth, remittances,
trade and GDP.
DataFirst e.g. data quality of
household surveys, and the analysis
of inequality and labour markets in
South Africa (Prof Martin Wittenberg).

19. SDG UN Examples African Examples/Initiatives/Projects
Industry,
Innovation
and
Infrastructure
Data from GPS devices can be
used for traffic control and to
improve public transport.
Kenya National Public Health
Gateway saving lives through science
and technology to mitigate the effects
of motorcycle-related accidents in
Kenya, which cause more deaths than
those involving bicycles and cars.
Reduced
Inequality
Speech-to-text analytics on
local radio content can reveal
discrimination concerns and
support policy response.
Reproducible Automatic Speech
Recognition combines compute
resources, ASR workflows, Open
Access data repositories, metadata
libraries, and persistence and
uniqueness frameworks to allow
researchers to discover, extend and
reproduce ASR work.
Sustainable
Cities and
Communities
Satellite remote sensing can
track encroachment on public
land or spaces such as parks
and forests.
Smart Cities e.g. Madagascar. Mobile
& static infrastructure technologies
are enabling intelligent low-emissions
transportation systems, safer
communities, new low-cost utility
services, more efficient city
operations, and much more.

20. SDG UN Examples African Examples/Initiatives/Projects
Responsible
Consumption
and
Production
Online search patterns or e-
commerce transactions can
reveal the pace of transition to
energy efficient products.
openAfrica contains data sets on
many disciplines, and also on e-
Commerce. Data from across Africa
collected.
Climate
Action
Combining satellite imagery,
crowd-sourced witness
accounts and open data can
help track deforestation.
WASCAL Data Discovery Portal –
West African Science Service Centre
on Climate Change and Adapted Land
Use. Provides climate data, food
security data and many more.
Life Below
Water
Maritime vessel tracking data
can reveal illegal, unregulated
and unreported fishing
activities.
Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas - SOCAT
enables quantification of the ocean
carbon sink and ocean acidification
and evaluation of ocean
biogeochemical models.
Biogeochemical and climate research
information which informs policy.

21. SDG UN Examples African Examples/Initiatives/Projects
Life on Land Social media monitoring can
support disaster management
with real-time information on
victim location, effects and
strength of forest fires or haze.
Kenya National Public Health
Gateway saving lives through science
and technology to mitigate the effects
of motorcycle-related accidents in
Kenya, which cause more deaths than
those involving bicycles and cars.
Peace, Justice
and Strong
Institutions
Sentiment analysis of social
media can reveal public opinion
on effective governance, public
service delivery or human
rights.
Kenya Online Voting System - system
enables the electoral body to cut
costs incurred during elections.
Data Zetu – Helps communities to
make better, more evidence-based
decisions to improve their lives, build
skills and develop digital and
offline tools that make information
accessible to everyone (Tanzania).
Partnerships
for the Goals
Partnerships to enable the
combining of statistics, mobile
and internet data can provide a
better and realtime
understanding of today’s hyper-
connected world.
H3ABioNet, SKA, GBIF – collaborative
projects on genomes, origin of the
universe, and biodiversity, impacting
on all.

22. “Several open science activities are underway
across Africa, but a great deal will be gained if, in
the context of developing inter-regional links,
these activities were to be coordinated and
developed through such a coordinating
initiative.” - CODATA

23. Open Data Repositories (re3data - 16)

24. Square Kilometre Array (SKA)
Ghana, Zambia, Madagascar, Botswana,
Namibia, Kenya, Mauritius and
Mozambique

25. Testing Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity; imaging neutral
hydrogen—the building blocks for stars – in the distant universe; and
examining galaxies that were formed billions of years ago
“Construction of the SKA is due to begin in 2018 and finish sometime
in the middle of the next decade.
Data acquisition will begin in 2020, requiring a level of processing
power and data management know-how that outstretches current
capabilities.
Astronomers estimate that the project will generate 35,000-DVDs-
worth of data every second. This is equivalent to “the whole world
wide web every day,” said Fanaroff.”

26. H3ABioNet (H3Africa)
30 institutions, 15 African countries, 2 partners
outside Africa

27. http://theconversation.com/what-115-years-of-data-tells-us-about-africas-battle-with-malaria-past-and-present-
85482
The prevalence of malaria infection in sub-Saharan Africa
today is at the lowest point since 1900.

28. https://theodi.org/news/new-report-reveals-how-open-data-is-fuelling-problemsolving-in-the-developing-world-from-
mapping-ebola-to-protecting-banana-crops

29. Protecting banana farmers’
livelihoods in Uganda
Using maps to increase access to
education in Kenya
Monitoring child malnutrition
(Uganda)

30. Africa & Climate Change
United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
Climate & Water

31. https://aasopenresearch.org/

32. Accord on Open Data in a
Big Data World
• Proposes comprehensive
set of FAIR principles to
manage data
• Values of open data in
emerging scientific
culture of big data
• Need for an international
framework
• Provides framework &
plan for African data
science capacity
mobilization initiative
Call to Endorse

33. Key Stakeholders
• African Governments
• Global Network of Science Academies (IAP)
• International Council for Science (ICSU)
• The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS)
• Research Data Alliance (RDA)
• NRENs (Internet Service Providers for Education)
• Association of African Universities (AAU)
• African Science Academies (AAS and NASAC)
• African Research Councils (incl. DIRISA, funders – Science Granting
Initiative)
• African Universities
• Librarians (AfLIA, IFLA Africa)
• Other e.g. SPARC Africa, Open Knowledge Foundation

34. Governance & Funding
• Funded by SA Dept of Science & Technology
through the National Research Foundation
• Managed by ASSAf, directed by CODATA
(ICSU)
• Advisory Council
• Technical Advisory Board
• Research Community
• Project Team at ASSAf (3)

35. Phase 1 (Nov 2016 – Nov 2019)
Explore the African Landscape & Engage in Dialogue
& Create Awareness & Establish existing
status/needs on:
• Open science policy and strategy;
• Open science information technology (IT)
infrastructure;
• Capacity building/training to support open
science; and
• Incentives for sharing science output and
specifically the underlying data sets, in an open
and transparent way.

36. Deliverables Phase 1
• Landscape Study – initiatives, experts on
African continent identified
• Engaged with high level national
stakeholders through meetings e.g. Uganda,
Madagascar, Botswana
• Science diplomacy: Numerous workshops,
presentations to create awareness &
advocate for OS
• Frameworks & Roadmaps to guide Open
Science Policy, ICT Infrastructure, Skills &
Capacity Building, Incentives

37. Frameworks
• Frameworks and guidance to assist policy
development at national and institutional level
• Study and recommendations to reduce barriers and
provide constructive incentives for Open Science
• Framework for data science training (including RDM,
data stewardship and science of data); curriculum
framework, training materials, recommendations for
training initiatives
• Framework and roadmap for data infrastructure
development: emphasising partnerships and de-
duplication between national systems, economies of
scale, institutions and domain initiatives

38. Draft Landscape Study Initiatives/Country
https://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=56245
Please note: this is just a preview and data still to be cleaned and
updated and corrected.

39. AOSP Phase 2 - Platform
 Vision of a coordinating activity to help put in place
and link the enabling practices, capacities and
technologies for Open Science
 Pan African in ambition
 Phase 1 in preparation of the foundations for a
broader initiative in terms of outputs and network
building
 Successful first strategy workshop (March 2018)
followed by a stakeholder workshop (Sept 2018) to
prepare the platform initiative
 Aim for this to be launched at Science Forum
South Africa, Dec 2018

40. Phase 2 Suggested Activities
1. Registry of African data initiatives, collections and services
2. Coordination and provision of network, compute and storage (building on current work of
NRENs, targeting needs of Open Science, achieving economies of scale).
3. A virtual space for scientists to find, deposit, manage, share and reuse data, software
and metadata (i.e. support for / or provision of FAIR data components, data stewardship and
Research Infrastructures).
4. An African Data Science Institute (to develop African capacities at the international cutting
edge of research in data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and data
stewardship).
5. Major data-intensive programmes in science areas where Africa is data-asset rich
(process for identifying these areas, obtaining funding, ensuring that RIs are in place).
6. Network for Education and Skills in Data and Information (training programmes in data
science, data stewardship, data literacy, targeted at all stages of education).
7. Network for Open Science Access and Dialogue (building full engagement and joint action
in transdisciplinary and citizen science initiatives as an essential component of Open Science).

41. INTERNATIONAL DATA WEEK
IDW 2018
Gaborone, Botswana: 5-8 November 2018
Information: http://internationaldataweek.org/
Deadline for abstracts, 31 May:
https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW2018/

42. Thank you
http://africanopenscience.org.za
Ina Smith
ina@assaf.org.za
Susan Veldsman
susan@assaf.org.za