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    The ResearchAfrica Project

    SARIMA is proud to be associated with a major project enabling African universities to participate in international research funding opportunities. A Consortium consisting of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), ResearchResearch Ltd and SARIMA have been successful in obtaining a major grant from the Department for International Development (DfID) for the Research Africa Project entitled Enabling Access to Research Opportunities in Africa.
     
    Excellent progress on the ResearchAfrica project has been made during 2008, which marked the end of the DFID funding period. However a request was granted to SARIMA for a no-cost extension of the project until February 2009 (to allow for the completion of the development of v1.0 of the ResearchAfrica.net platform). During the close-out meeting for the project held in London during October 2008, the project received positive feedback from DFID, and the consortium was congratulated on its achievements of the projected outcomes for the project. This includes the ResearchAfrica.net platform containing a database of international funding opportunities, the ACU e-library with an extensive database on research and innovation management policies of higher education institutions across the world, and the NEPAD S&T policy e-library, containing information on S & T policies of African countries.

    The ResearchAfrica project attracted further donor funding in 2008 from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). This grant is specifically aimed at supporting the subscription of a number of African research institutions to the ResearchAfrica service. The implementation of the SIDA project started in September 2008, and SARIMA was again tasked with the financial oversight of the project. While the uptake of this opportunity by African institutions has been slower than expected, several initiatives were launched early in 2009 to increase communication and marketing of this offer, in order to reach the target number of 50 new subscriptions over the two year grant-period. http://www.Research-Africa.net