UbuntuNet Alliance, in collaboration with the South African Research and Education Network (TENET) and Committee of Higher Education Libraries in South Africa (Chelsa), delivered a two-day Research Repository Stewardship Programme (RRSP) workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 4-5 October 2026. The workshop brought together 53 librarians from South African higher learning education institutions to strengthen their capacity to manage and improve existing open institutional repositories (OIRs).
The workshop is part of Unlocking Potential: Elevating Open Institutional Repositories in Africa for Global Impact, a three-year project led by UbuntuNet Alliance and sponsored by Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) through its Network Adoption Fund. Working through National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in 16 countries across Eastern and Southern Africa, the project combines shared infrastructure, skills development and institutional support. It aims to increase the number of OIRs in the region from approximately 190 to more than 400 by the end of 2027, and the RRSP aims to reach 560 librarians through workshops in all 16 countries. This workshop marked training number 10.
The first day brought all participants together for plenary sessions on the South African National Research Repository Project, repository policy, governance and legal compliance, and research discoverability, visibility and impact. The national project aims to connect institutional repositories through a unified platform, enabling cross-institutional discovery of research outputs through a single search interface. This relies on standardised, machine-readable metadata and a shared framework for interoperability and digital curation.
On the second day, participants split into two specialised training streams. Metadata librarians explored metadata standards, interoperability and emerging trends in metadata exchange. Repository managers focused on repository technologies, digital preservation, long-term sustainability and the establishment of a Community of Practice to support continued collaboration and knowledge sharing.
A key takeaway from the workshop was that depositing research outputs in a repository is only the first step towards ensuring their discoverability. High-quality metadata and persistent identifiers are essential for facilitating the identification, indexing and retrieval of research outputs across digital platforms.
The RRSP is one of three capacity-building initiatives under the IOI-funded project. 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 initiative for institutional open data champions, scheduled for 2027. Together, they address the technical and professional skills needed to build, improve and sustain open research infrastructure in Africa.
