Librarians from Higher Education Institutions across Rwanda converged on the capital city, Kigali, to attend the 3-day Research Repository Stewardship Workshop from September 14-16, 2026. The workshop, facilitated by Prof Madara Ogot, the CEO of UbuntuNet Alliance, seeks to equip the participants with the tools and skills to strengthen existing open research repositories (OIRs) or establish new ones at their institutions. The workshop, attended by 35 participants, was hosted by the Rwanda Research and Education Network (RwEdNet) and sponsored by the Invest in Open Infrastructure Fund (IOI).
The workshops are being run in each of the Alliance’s 16-member countries, targeting 560 librarians with the aim to significantly increase the number of OIRs in the Eastern and Southern Africa from approximately 190 in December 2026 to over 400 by the end of 2027. The small number of OIRs coupled with gaps in implementation of best practices has resulted in Africa’s research out remaining difficult to discover and access and therefore under used. The application of the skills developed during the workshop into practice shall significantly increase the discoverability and visibility of Rwanda’s and by extension Africa’ research output.
The workshop was officially opened by the Ministry of Education Chief Digital Officer, Ms. Bella Rwigamba. During her remarks , she reminded the participants that they were in sessions to upskill and reskill and should also use the workshop as an opportunity to network and know what other universities were doing.
She informed the participants that their
“… universities have been connected to [RwEdNets] dedicated network. The network … provides internet to your campuses and colleges … together with schools, about 1,450. You therefore have a very large network that goes beyond just the universities. One of the things we want to do on the network, in addition to connectivity, is to share content. Universities need to share knowledge, but also need to show what they have acheived … through the repositories and the work of the librarians.”
She urged the participants to make good use of the opportunity presented by the workshop.
A post-workshop survey of the participants found that only a small number, ~38% of the represented institutions had a functional open institutional repository. Of the institutions that did not yet have an OIR,~38% were at advanced stages of establishing one within the next one year and ~39% within the next couple of years. The training should prove useful in supporting those who have repositories strengthen their them and guide those who are in the planning stages.
The Research Repository Stewardship Programme is one of three run by the Alliance and its member NRENs, under the IOI-funded project, Unlocking Potential: Elevating Open Institutional Repositories in Africa for Global Impact. The other two are the DSpace as a Service Engineering Bootcamp for NREN system engineers and the Research Data Stewardship Programme, an intensive Training of Trainers for institutional open data champions to be run in 2027. Combined, the three capacity-building programmes seek to significantly increase the number of open institutional repositories across Eastern and Southern Africa to enhance the discovery, accessibility, and reusability of research outputs from and about Africa.
