The Sci-GaIA project Prof. Roberto Barbera – University of Catania - Italy (roberto.barbera@ct.infn.it) 2 November 2016 – Sci-GaIA Workshop on “Open Science for Research without Frontiers” Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)

Summary and conclusions Outline Background The Sci-GaIA project General information Results Summary and conclusions

Background (1/2) Several EU funded projects have investigated and nurtured e-Infrastructures in Africa These projects have made significant steps towards the development of African e-Infrastructures The development of Certification Authorities and Identity Federations by several African NRENs The first Science Gateway demonstrator was deployed to show how African Communities of Practice (CoPs) can use these technologies for science

Background (2/2) Sci-GaIA builds on the results of many e-Infrastructure flagship projects Teaming-up for exploiting e-Infrastructures’ potential to boost RTDI in Africa (eI4Africa) 2012 – 2014 Coordination and Harmonisation of Advanced e-Infrastructures (CHAIN) 2010-2012 Coordination and Harmonisation of Advanced e-Infrastructures for Research and Education Data Sharing (CHAIN-REDS) 2012-2015 Promoting African European Research Infrastructure Partnerships (PAERIP) 2011-2013 Exploiting Research Infrastructures potential for Boosting Research and Innovation in Africa (ERINA4Africa) 2009 – 2011 Supporting the development of cooperation on e-Infrastructures with Africa (eI-Africa) 2009-2011 Exchange Programme for e-Infrastructure Know-How (EPIKH) 2009-2013 In addition, the Sci-GaIA consortium significantly contributed  in key projects supporting the development of ICT in Africa, strengthening the cooperation between Europe and Africa, and improving the interconnection of research communities Connecting research communities across sub-Saharan Africa (AfricaConnect) 2011-2015 Global Linkage Over Broadband Links (GLOBAL) 2008-2010 Feasibility Study for African – European Research and Education Network Interconnection (FEAST) 2008-2009 Supporting policy dialogues and cooperation with Africa to enhance ICT cooperative research links between Europe and Africa in the framework of the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership (EuroAfrica-P8) 2012-2014 Supporting the development of cooperation on ICT research with sub-Saharan Africa (EuroAfrica-ICT) 2008-2009

The Sci-GaIA Project “at a glance” (www.sci-gaia.eu)

The Sci-GaIA Consortium (www. sci-gaia The Sci-GaIA Consortium (www.sci-gaia.eu/about-sci-gaia/project-partners/)

Workplan (www.sci-gaia.eu/project-activities/) The main aim of the Sci-GaIA Coordination and Support Action is to create a sustainable foundation of educational material and procedures for the development and management of Science Gateways and e-Infrastructures in Africa and beyond to energise scientific endeavor The approach is based on several objectives that are articulated around concrete activities WP1 WP2 WP3 WP4

A definition A Science Gateway (a.k.a. Virtual Research Environment/ Virtual Laboratory) is a "community-development set of tools, applications, and data that is integrated via a portal or a suite of applications, usually in a graphical user interface, that is further customized to meet the needs of a specific community“ [TeraGrid] Often Science Gateways leverage larger scale facilities to increase access and enable collaboration Science Gateways can be used to tackle common scientific goals as well as offering resources for educating students and informing non-experts For more information, visit the website of the “International Coalition on Science Gateways”

WP1 – Support - Objectives Create Science Gateway and e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for African NRENs and CoPs Create Science Gateway and e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for African educational programmes Monitor the successful implementation and uptake of e-Infrastructures in Africa Ensure the interoperability and interoperation between the African, the EU and the global e-Infrastructures

T1.1.1 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for NRENs and Communities of Practice (See all details at www.sci-gaia.eu/materials) Application Integration and Delivery Guides e-Infrastructure Deployment Guides Open Access Repository Deployment and Conf. Guide Code and documentation are available on GitHub under Apache 2.0 license to ensure openness and re-usability Documentation is automatically generated in multiple formats (HTML, PDF, eBook)

T1.1.2 – Science Gateway development guidelines and materials for NRENs and Communites of Practice (See all details at www.sci-gaia.eu/materials) SG Installation & Configuration SG IDE Installation & Configuration SG IDE Virtual Appliance SG Web Applications’ Dev. Guides

T1.2 – Science Gateways development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the Winter School (See all details at www.sci-gaia.eu/materials) Lessons: Inaugural lesson Course pre-requisites Science Gateway Development Environment Portlet development Portlet User Interface Development Liferay portlet preferences Part 1: The Grid and Cloud Engine, Part 2: Portlet for job submission Portlet for special job submission

T1.2 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the “SP Course” (See all details at www.sci-gaia.eu/materials) Course on how to turn web-based services into Service Providers of Identity Federations Lessons: Shibboleth SP: installation and basic configuration for Single Sign On (SSO) – first part Shibboleth SP: installation and basic configuration for Single Sign On (SSO) – second part Shibboleth SP: advanced configuration The Discovery Service Register a Service Provider in the IDEM federation and in the eduGAIN inter-federation

T1.2 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the “SP Course” (See all details at www.sci-gaia.eu/materials) Textbook, virtual appliance and video-lessons (on OAR)  Virtual appliance for assignments and hands-ons Slides  Each Open Educational Resource has a DOI Video-lessons

T1.2 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the “SP Course” (See all details at www.sci-gaia.eu/materials) Courseware:

You’re all invited to fill the survey Task 1.3 - Monitor the successful implementation and uptake of e-Infrastructures in Africa (See http://surveys.sci-gaia.eu/index.php/531683) Link to survey sent to more than 10,000 potential participants In English and French Supported by 1-2 follow-up reminders You’re all invited to fill the survey

Certified “Grid“ sites in 6 countries : T1.4 – Africa & Arabia Regional Operations Centre (AAROC): Site interoperability (www.africa-grid.org) AAROC implements a set of Agreements between sites and the CSIR (OLA) and the CSIR and EGI (MoU/SLA) Regional NRENs: (ASREN, UBUNTUNET, WACREN) provide network and collaboration backbone, define the coverage AAROC provides support to sites wishing to integrate their services to the global infrastructure: Service deployment and orchestration Site certification Day-to-day operational support Certified “Grid“ sites in 6 countries : Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania

T1.4 – AAROC: Cloud interoperability The Sci-GaIA consortium fosters and supports the creation of an African research cloud, interoperable with the EGI Federated Cloud in Europe A short description of how to configure a cloud site to interoperate with the EGI Federated Cloud middleware is part of a cook-book included in the project's engagement page Thanks to the exploitation of the SAGA and OCCI standards, the Africa Grid Science Gateway is able to exploit the EGI Federated Cloud sites and we have recently included among its resources the cloud site of 100%IT, an ICT company based in the UK

WP2 – Community - Objectives Identify, promote and support both web-based and face-to-face cooperation between application facilities, service providers and associated end-user communities that can gain in their fields from using the e-Infrastructure tools fostered and promoted by the project Identify innovations and experiences made in the supported African user-communities and ensure that they are scientifically reviewed, selected and then communicated and disseminated to relevant stakeholder groups Ensure models for sustainability in the operation of African user-communities are developed and tested Ensure the global interoperability and reach of the e-Infrastructures supported Identify the need for planning, development and coordination of policies, programmes and contents of e-Infrastructures

The forum is meant to be an open environment where to discuss about: T2.1.1 - The e-Infrastructure discussion forum (http://discourse.sci-gaia.eu) The forum is meant to be an open environment where to discuss about: Open Science Commons Open Access Training and Education Identity Federations Science Gateways Applications Funding Opportunities Job Opportunities ... and much more The forum has been registered as a Service Provider of eduGAIN so you can sign in using the credentials provided by your organisation. For those who don't have institutional credentials, you're welcome to enroll on our "catch-all" Identity Provider Although it's been delivered by the Sci-GaIA project and mainly targets sub-Saharan Africa, the forum is widely open to external projects and to all other regions so people working in other projects and initiatives are very welcome to join and contribute to the discussions

T2. 1. 1 - The e-Infrastructure discussion forum (http://discourse

More on CoPs supported in the next presentations T2.2 - Provide support to emerging communities of practice - T2.3 - Identify and support new communities of practice - The Community Map (www.sci-gaia.eu/community) More on CoPs supported in the next presentations

WP3 – Services - Objectives Expand and extend activities carried out in past projects in order to consolidate the African e-Infrastructure services and to include the very challenging goal of supporting the creation of an African Open (and Linked) Data Infrastructure, interoperable with and federated to (through the adoption of international standards and guidelines) those emerging in EU and in other regions of the world Combine Open Access repositories with Science Gateways in order to deal with very important topics such as the discoverability, reproducibility and extensibility of science products

T3.1 – The Sci-GaIA Open Access Repository (http://oar.sci-gaia.eu/) authentication federated Resources can be: Manually uploaded Automatically harvested and ingested from external sources Sci-GaIA add-ons to Invenio: The possibility to mint DataCite Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and assign them to the records stored in the OAR If existing, direct links to the altmetrics of each of the records contained in the OAR The correct metadata structure and the right OAI-PMH endpoint configuration to make the OAR compliant with version 3.0 of the OpenAIRE Guidelines.

T3.2 – Support the creation of an African Policy Management Authority and the establishment of Identity Federations to be connected to eduGAIN - The agreement with Comodo Trust and security are key technical requirements of the operation of identity federations and one of the main inhibitors of the development of distributed infrastructures is the inclusion in trust anchors and the subsequent availability of trusted certificate authorities (CAs) In June 2015, Sci-GaIA renewed and extended the agreement with Comodo already established in the context of the eI4Africa project The new agreement includes 5,000 free server certificates*years and the possibility to issue them for the services of all African NRENs (including all the RRENs: ASREN, UBUNTUNET and WACREN)

T3. 2 – Federated services supported/deployed (See full list at www T3.2 – Federated services supported/deployed (See full list at www.sci-gaia.eu/federated-services/)      

Task 3.3: Support the operation and development of the Africa Grid Science Gateway - Applications integrated in the Africa Grid Science Gateway (1/2) (See all details at www.sci-gaia.eu/applications)

T3.3 – Identity Federations/Providers supported by the Africa Grid SG

WP4 – Dissemination & Training - Objectives The purpose of WP4 is to support training in Science Gateways and e-Infrastructures, and to disseminate and communicate the results of the project The specific objectives include: Formulating and implementing a global dissemination strategy Monitoring and ensuring the consistency of all external activities of the project Organising the planned project events and ensuring maximum participation and impact Running training workshops for Science Gateway and e-Infrastructure development Showcasing key developments in these areas to communicate the benefits of these technologies to CoPs Delivering three Sci-GaIA workshops and a final conference Regularly examining and updating the project exploitation perspectives

Task 4.1 - Branding and dissemination/communication material – The Sci-GaIA website (www.sci-gaia.eu)

T4.1 – The Open Science Platform (www.sci-gaia.eu/osp)

T4. 1 – The Dakar Declaration on Open Science in Africa (www. sci-gaia T4.1 – The Dakar Declaration on Open Science in Africa (www.sci-gaia.eu/dakar-declaration)

T4.1 – The Service Catalogue (www.sci-gaia.eu/service-catalogue)

T4.1 – “How can we help you?” (www.sci-gaia.eu/engagement)

Application form still open and grants available! T4.2 – Training – Next event: the WACREN e-Research Hackfest (https://goo.gl/09zb7I) Application form still open and grants available! More on past training in the next presentations

Thank you! sci-gaia.eu info@sci-gaia.eu