As a result of a collaboration between INRIA and six African universities, the International Laboratory for Research in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (LIRIMA) was created in Yaoundé – Cameroon – in Nov. 2009 under the direction of Maurice Tchuente, a world-renowned computer scientist from Cameroon.

Many other research organisations participate as partners in this project: 73 African and 45 European and Canadian researchers, including 25 from INRIA, have already demonstrate their will to work for this new laboratory that perpetuates and reinforces the work undertaken by the SARIMA programme, funded between 2004 and 2008 by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and initiated by INRIA with the aim of setting up equitable North-South collaboration in mathematics and computer science.

Willing to operate both in Europe and Africa, LIRIMA could represent the first step for the creation of a Euro-African scientific alliance in this field. For more information: M.C.Sance-Plouchart (INRIA).