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Eko-Konnect Users Conference brings together practitioners in the research and education networking community, librarians, researchers, policymakers, and service providers from across Nigeria and West Africa. The conference creates a platform for the research and education community in Nigeria to discuss common challenges and opportunities in developing the sector through information and communications technology.
This year’s event addressed the steps to be taken towards delivering infrastructure and services for the development of a national research repository and better management of research data.
Around 150 stakeholders from the Nigerian research and education network community from 50 organisations convened at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos to participate in the 2-day event. Representation from government, academia, private sector and technical community. The conference theme, “Developing National Repositories for Sciences and Humanities” raised awareness of the need to develop a national repository for research output and the role of each stakeholder in creating these repositories. Through the conference presentations and active interactions, the participants were engaged with the key issues in developing a national repository. These include infrastructure for telecommunication and connectivity, software and services for data management and identity and access management and skills development for academic staff. Funding for quality and impactful research was also a key topic of discussion during the conference. Participants were able to define various avenues for collaborations that could be fostered among themselves.
Research practitioners from Cote D’Ivoire shared their knowledge and experience on best practices for research data management, and the progress they were making with developing a national repository. At the end of the conference participants agreed that a communique outlining the recommendations and steps to be taken by the Eko-Konnect community be prepared.
Two side events also took place with the conference. These were the Eko-Konnect Repository Workshop and eduID Policy meeting and the Eko-Konnect Youth in Technology which took place on 27 and 30 January 2020 respectively.