The EuroAfrica-P8 Partnership is very pleased to announce that this year edition of the “Africa-EU Cooperation Forum on ICT” (an event designed to anyone with an interest in Euro-African collaborative project on ICT) will be held on November 28-29, 2012, at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) in Lisbon, Portugal. The event is organised by the EuroAfrica-P8 Partnership in the framework of the EuroAfrica-ICT Initiative and with the support of the National Science Foundation (FCT) of Portugal.

This major event is the fifth of a series of very successful conferences organised by the EuroAfrica-ICT Initiative under the aegis of the European and the African Union Commissions (EC & AUC). These conferences have traditionally provided an indisputable focal point for all Euro-African stakeholders in the public and private sectors involved in collaborative ICT research and ICT for development with a specific emphasis on networking-opportunities, knowledge-sharing and consensus-building.

Organised in the framework of the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership (JAES) and hosted by the Government of Portugal through the Ministry of Education and Science (MEC), this 5th Forum edition will mainly aim at strengthening and supporting the development of cooperation on ICT research and ICT4D between Africa and Europe by: i). Allowing European and African stakeholders involved in the development of cooperation on ICT to get together; ii). Allowing participants to exchange views, share information, and identify synergies in order to increase the impact of their activities; iii). Further supporting policy dialogues, apprehending medium-to long term perspectives and agreeing on an overall and coherent vision; iv). Increasing the number of African organisations involved in EU/FP collaborative projects on ICT research thus enhancing the development of Euro-African collaborative projects in the field.

200-250 delegates are expected to attend the event: institutions, national and international companies, SMEs, academia, research institutes, etc. With a wide range of themes to be explored, including e-Learning, e-Health, e-Governance, e-Infrastructures, Living Labs, RECs, etc., a comprehensive programme will ensure all participants are able to develop international, cross-cutting contacts and enhance their knowledge and expertise.

The “2012 Africa-EU Cooperation Forum on ICT” will also feature various session types:

• Plenary sessions (featuring officials from the European Commission, the African Union Commission, Governments, and internationally acknowledged e-Infrastructures experts)
• Presentation sessions (organised around the main conference themes)
• Discussions and debates sessions (offering participants the opportunity to actively contribute to the Conference outputs)
• Networking sessions (aiming at facilitating additional and informal networking opportunities).

The event Tentative Agenda and the Information Package will be available very soon on the EuroAfrica-ICT website. A call for papers and communications will be published very soon as well. If you are interested in being involved in the event as a sponsor or as an associated organization, please contact the event organisers anytime at forum-lisbon@euroafrica-ict.org.

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More details coming soon: stay tuned!

This workshop aims at raising awareness in Africa on the ICT theme of the European Union’s Framework Programmes (FP) for Research and Development and at enhancing the participation of African organisations in EU-funded, collaborative ICT research projects. This will be done by introducing local stakeholders to the cooperation opportunities offered by EU FP and by contributing to the refinement of focused Euro/Africa ICT research project ideas.

This workshop is organised by the CSIR (South Africa) in collaboration with Sigma Orionis (France) under the aegis of the European Commission (DG INFSO, International Relations Unit) and in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in Lesotho within the framework of the EuroAfrica-P8 initiative. Download the flyer here.

Registrations are now open: register now!

More information is available in the ‘events’ page of the website.

The Horizon 2020 EU framework program for research and innovation will build on 3 major pillars: tackling Societal Challenges, creating Industrial Leadership and establishing Excellence in Science. As an essential part of these major objectives is the provisioning of excellent research infrastructures (including ICT research infrastructures). This strategic event will discuss the important question on the role of ICT research infrastructures in the Horizon 2020 framework program: (1) Where are we today? (2) Where do we envision to be in 2020 and (3) How can we bridge this gap in the Horizon 2020 program?

The event, taking place in Brussels (Belgium) on June 20, 2012, is aimed at bringing together representatives and key persons from decision making bodies and Public Authorities at both EU and national level who are involved in the process of setting up, supporting and evaluating European ICT-related Research Infrastructures.

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]]> http://euroafrica-ict.org/2012/05/02/the-role-of-ict-research-infrastructures-in-horizon-2020/feed/ 0 http://euroafrica-ict.org/2012/04/30/bic-workshops-on-international-cooperation-and-trustworthy-ict/ http://euroafrica-ict.org/2012/04/30/bic-workshops-on-international-cooperation-and-trustworthy-ict/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:40:08 +0000 Website editor http://euroafrica-ict.org/?p=5950 June 21, 2012June 22, 2012

The BIC project is organising in Brussels (Belgium) two workshops over two full days:

• The workshop on Cross domain coordination of International Cooperation (INCO) is taking place on June 21, 2012, with the aim of: a/. Determining the ways to move forward on international cooperation, and future calls for collaborative research; b/. Forming the current bi-lateral (and potentially overlapping) country to country cooperation into a comprehensive and coordinated global cooperation; c/. Compiling a who’s who directory of agency and research contacts across the countries; d/. Identifying “success metrics” for international cooperation and collaboration (motives and goals, success criteria and impact).

• The Workshop on International Cooperation in Trustworthy ICT is taking place on June 22, 2012, with the aim of: a/. Refining thematic focus within the domains covered by the Working Groups by leveraging domain knowledge, familiarity with context and environment and research experience; b/. Identifying and validating long term common shared research perspectives for international cooperation of mutual interests, aligned with the ICT trust and security research domains within the EU research vision and priorities (FP7 and H2020); c/. Representing stakeholder views to be expressed toward the decision makers (the European Commission and the respective Governments for which they carry out research) in the formulation of enabling and relevant policies; d./ Providing expert advice to BIC in thematic areas of competence and direct the project consortium to material, publications, activities, projects that might be of interest to BIC, its objectives and actions; e/. Assisting the BIC project to leverage its actions into achievements within the larger community of stakeholders and institutions.

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The closing date for receiving abstract is May, 14 2012.

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The African Network Operators’ Group (AfNOG) and the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) are jointly organizing a two-week event that includes the AfNOG Workshop on Network Technology (offering advanced training in a week-long hands-on workshop), several full-day Advanced Tutorials, a one-day AfNOG Meeting, and a two-day AfriNIC Meeting. In addition, several side meetings and workshops will be hosted in collaboration with other organizations.

The meeting series aims to offer advanced training to people who are in the process of developing and enhancing an internet-connected network with regional and in international connectivity. The workshop welcomes all Network engineers in the Africa region who wish to acquire the necessary skill in IT.

These events will take place in Serekunda, The Gambia, on May 6-18, 2012.

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The fourth International Conference on e‐Infrastructure and e‐Services for Developing Countries will take place in Yaounde, Cameroon on November 12–14, 2012.

AFRICOMM 2012 aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in ICT to discuss issues and trends, recent research, innovation advances and on-the-field experiences related to e-Infrastructure, e-Governance, e-Business, and enabling policy and regulations with a deep focus on developing countries.

A call for proposals is now open, and it will close on July 28, 2012.

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The conference has been conceived by the organizers as an opportunity to enrich and strengthen the Africa-Europe STI cooperation relationship through providing a forum for exchange of opinions, sharing and mutual learning between stakeholders and experts from Africa and Europe. Taking the topics of the 2009 Coordinated Call for Africa as the conference theme and drawing on practical examples of past and on-going S&T bi-regional cooperation initiatives as case studies, the conference explored a range of issues related to the role of innovation systems and policies in the context of bi-regional cooperation, with a view to enhancing the contributions of R&D to identifying solutions to global challenges.

The EuroAfrica-ICT Initiative was represented at this conference by two EuroAfrica-P8 project partners: Karine Valin (Sigma Orionis) and Mohamadou Arabani Saibou (ESMT), who promoted the project and its upcoming activities with the aim of developing synergies with other initiatives and strengthening relations with key stakeholders in the field.

The project CAAST-Net, funded by the European Commission under the 7th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), has been developed as a high-level platform to advance international cooperation in science and technology between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa for mutual benefit. Enhancing the policy dialogue among African and European stakeholders around research and innovation responses to regional and global challenges is one strategic activity of the CAAST-Net project.

The 2Gbps point-to-point circuit will enable astronomers at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) in South Africa to stream observational data to the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) in the Netherlands for processing and correlation, and is the first point-to-point circuit between GÉANT and UbuntuNet.

HartRAO, located in a valley in the Magaliesberg hills, 50 km west of Johannesburg, is the only major radio astronomy observatory in Africa. Through the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), it collaborates with radio telescopes on other continents to form a virtual telescope the size of the Earth.

Combining observations from multiple telescopes using VLBI allows more detailed observations of distant astronomical objects than with any other technique. Information is sent in real-time from radio telescopes around the world to JIVE, where these enormous volumes of simultaneous observation data are correlated to form high resolution images of cosmic radio sources.

The establishment of the point-to-point circuit is part of the European VLBI Network’s (EVN) e-EVN development programme for electronic VLBI (e-VLBI). This uses high speed research networks to transfer data for processing in real-time is an alternative to the traditional VLBI method of recording and shipping data on disk. e-VLBI enables observations of transient phenomena such as supernovae, using the highest resolution astronomical technique possible.

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Columbia University’s Institute for Tele-Information, in partnership with global sponsors from business and academia, will host the inaugural conference on Broadband as a Video Platform – Strategies for Africa at the Intercontinental Hotel in Lusaka, Zambia, on May 22 and 23, 2012.

This unique event will address the strategies and building blocks for Africa’s deployment and advancement of broadband as a video platform. Experts from the business, governmental and academic sectors will discuss how investment in broadband for video and related services can improve quality, accessibility and end-user experience in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Speakers include infoDev’s own Dr. Tim Kelly and Dr. Brahima Sanou, Director of the Bureau of Telecommunications Development, International Telecommunications Union, as well as a broad range of experts active in the field – corporate CEOs, researchers, regulators, carriers, financiers and policy-makers.

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