The CoP-ROOI represents a group of research and innovation administrators and managers, researchers and more who are informally bound to one another through exposure to common challenges and pursuit of solutions including knowledge translation and brokering. CoP-ROOI also plays a crucial role to encourage and support African countries to ensure that the output and outcomes of researchers, research programmes and research institutions are optimal, and lead to quantifiable impact. These can include leading practices, guidelines, knowledge repositories, technical problem and solution discussions, position papers, opinion pieces, policy briefs, working papers and strategies.

It is increasingly required of research and innovation organisations to report on the outcome and impact of their researchers and research programmes, not only as it translates into policy and practice, but also in terms of knowledge translation to products and services with socio-economic impact.