Librarians from Lesotho participated in a 3-day immersive Research Repository Stewardship Programme workshop, facilitated by Prof Madara Ogot, CEO of UbuntuNet Alliance, from June 22-24, 2026 in Maseru, Lesotho. Hosted by the Lesotho Research and Education Network (LesREN) and sponsored by the Invest in Open Infrastructure Fund (IOI), the thirty-four participants were provided with the tools and skills needed to strengthen existing or establish new open research repositories at their institutions.
The workshop was the third in the series targeting 560 librarians in 16 UbuntuNet Alliance member countries. The aim is to increase the number of open institutional research repositories in the region from approximately 190 to over 400 by 2027.
Speaking during the workshop, the LesREN CEO, noted that, “LesREN’s mandate is to support the aspirations of the government in Research and Education … Maybe next year, [LesREN] will have connected two or three institutions. That is our ambition.” LesREN was formed in 2025 and joined UbuntuNet Alliance in October of the same year.
A survey of the participants (see below) revealed that only ~18% of institutions have a repository. Of those who did not, it was encouraging to note that ~47% were either in the early (1-2 years) or advanced (with one year) stages of establishing a repository at their institution.
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, intensive Training of Trainers for institutional open data champions. 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.
