Digital Hub for Open Research in East Africa: Harnessing open research capabilities to generate new knowledge solutions in East Africa

With just six years to go to meet the urgent targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to find new ways to harness the power of science to address critical issues of human health, welfare and prosperity.

Across East Africa, communities are grappling with complex challenges – from adapting agricultural practices to a rapidly changing climate in Tanzania, to addressing the widening learning gap in Kenya through new approaches to primary teaching, to improving the nutritional status of households in rural northern Uganda, to finding new ways to help Rwanda’s growing young population into meaningful and dignified employment.

By establishing a digital hub for open research in East Africa we will harness the transformative possibilities of open science to enable talented young East African researchers to bring new knowledge, fresh thinking and passion to change lives and livelihoods to bear on some of the most critical questions facing their nations and communities, and to deliver real impact.

We will equip 250 East African early career researchers – women and men –to navigate the research process and their local contexts using open tools, technologies and approaches confidently and skilfully and to design, deliver and communicate research that centres community needs, and that combines scientific rigour with the ability to position knowledge for impact.

We will do this through:

• Developing and delivering a digital learning programme covering core themes in open research practices, introducing researchers to key open science tools, and equipping them to incorporate these into their research
• Awarding up to three small grants to local teams to convene hands-on, practical learning sessions building on the digital learning program
• Training 25 open research champions to provide on-going support to their colleagues and students to extend and deepen the use of open research approaches in their institutions and region

The digital hub will be hosted on INASP's AuthorAID and elearning platforms which already connect 14,000 early career researchers across the Global South.

This project is funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. (funder DOI 501100011730) under the grant https://doi.org/10.54224/33195.