On February 22nd, 2024, The Africa PID Alliance (APA) took part in an immersive day-long gathering organized by Crossref, at Fairmont the Norfolk in Nairobi, Kenya. The event, which brought together librarians, editorial teams, researchers, and scholarly communication professionals, served as a platform for discussions on enhancing scholarly communication in the region.
At the heart of the discussions was APA’s pivotal role in addressing the challenges and opportunities surrounding the digitization of research outputs in Africa. Joy Owango, representing the Africa PID Alliance (APA), introduced its mission and innovative strategies to the attendees, highlighting the critical role of APA in securing the future of African innovation, indigenous knowledge, and cultural heritage. The event provided an opportunity for APA to engage with stakeholders and showcase its efforts to support scientists and inventors in disseminating and commercializing their research innovations.
In addition to the presentations, the Africa PID Alliance (APA) also set up an exhibition desk at the event, where 55 attendees signed up for the Community Statement: Enhancing Africa’s production of PIDs, demonstrating widespread support for APA’s mission and initiatives in advancing digital infrastructure and preserving indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage.
Looking ahead, the Africa PID Alliance (APA) remains committed to its mission of addressing the hurdles of digitizing research outputs in Africa. APA remains at the forefront of efforts to bridge the digital divide and empower the African research community, with forthcoming plans for initiatives and collaborations poised to propel its impact even further.
About Crossref
Crossref is a global community infrastructure that makes all kinds of research objects easy to find, assess, and reuse through a number of services critical to research communications, including an open metadata API that sees over 1.2 billion queries every month. Crossref’s 19,000+ members come from 155 countries. Their >150 million DOI records contribute to the collective vision of a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organizations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society.
About the Africa PID Alliance (APA)
The Africa PID Alliance is part of the Open Infrastructure Program of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa). The Africa PID Alliance’s mission is to secure the future of African Innovation, Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Heritage. Through the Africa PID Alliance innovative projects, we provide reliable open research infrastructure services which provides access to knowledge and metadata about digital objects closer to the wider communities, including indigenous knowledge and patent metadata, starting from Africa.