Photo courtesy Helsinki Summer School

The ERINA4Africa project is holding a final conference in conjunction with the 2010 Euro-Africa e-Infrastructures Conference on December 9-10, 2010, in the Scandic Marina Congress Center, Helsinki, Finland. It is part of the framework for the 2010 Euro-Africa Week on ICT Research and e-Infrastructures.

The aim of the conference is to present the results of the Erina4Africa study. The program objectives are:

• Enabling European and African stakeholders involved in the development of cooperation on e-Infrastructures to get together.
• Allowing participants to exchange views, share information, and identify synergies in order to increase the impact of their activities.
• Supporting policy dialogues, apprehending medium- to long- term perspectives, and agreeing on an overall and coherent vision.
• Raising awareness and promoting the use of e-infrastructures under development, encouraging the emergence of early adopters.
• Giving the highest visibility to ongoing initiatives aimed at supporting the development of NRENs (National Research and Education Networks) in Africa and their interconnection to the GÉANT network.
• Increasing the number of sub-Saharan organizations involved in EU/FP7 collaborative projects.

The conference will open with a networking cocktail on 9 December and will follow with a series of plenary speeches on the 10th. ERINA4Africa is organizing the session: “Exploiting e-infrastructures Potential for Boosting Research and Innovation in Africa and for Fostering Euro-Africa Cooperation” (Dec. 10, 2010, 8:45am – 10:45am). And it is chairing the Roundtable Discussion “Linking Policies to Applications – Recommendations & Action Plan” (Dec. 10, 2010, 12:15pm – 1:15pm). Participation at the event is free of charge but online registration is required.

About ERINA4Africa:

Erina4Africa is a European project for all those interested in e-Infrastructures, e-Learning, e-Government, e-Health and European-African collaboration. The project aims to provide African and EU policy makers with a detailed analysis of exploitable scenarios of existing, and new, e-infrastructures in Africa. It aims to provide: a virtual observatory; a foresight study as well as robust results validated by the community, via a series of virtual conferences and local meetings.