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1st Phase of VODAN Africa Project (April – September 2020)

The First Phase of VODAN Africa (April – September 2020)

To develop African expertise in the area of FAIR Data Management. With sponsorship from Philips Foundation, we embarked on an intense Training of Trainers (ToT) program to equip the data stewards from Africa. They were trained on FAIR Data Management, Principles of FAIR Data, FAIR Data Point (FDP) deployment through webinar series hosted by Christine Kirkpatrick of San Diego Supercomputer Center, Metadata for Machine (M4M) Workshops conducted by Eric Schultes, the International Science Coordinator, GO FAIR Foundation.

We had committed partnerships and institutional support from Philips Foundation, Leiden University, GO FAIR Foundation, CODATA, Cordaid, Kampala International University Uganda, Tangaza University Kenya, Mekelle University, and Addis Ababa University, in Ethiopia, In Nigeria, we had Ibrahim Badamasi University, Lapai, and Data Science Nigeria. Also among the partner universities are De Sousse Tunisia and Great Zimbabwe University.

Deliverables on the First Phase

  1. FAIR Data Points (FDPs) were established in 9 locations in Africa as well as the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and these FDPs were all called home – meaning that these were findable for algorithms. The FDPs are located in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
  2. This deployment was followed by data production in the FAIR Data Points was facilitated for a semantic model of the WHO electronic Covid Report Forms (eCRF) through a tool produced by the DSW-Wizard.
  3. On 29 September 2020, a first Sparql query was run between the Kampala International University FDP and the LUMC FDP over the internet. The algorithm successfully visited data curated and held in residence in the locations, visited through the FDP’s, findable on the web in a human and machine-readable language. 

Read about the 2nd phase of the VODAN Africa Project