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

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

3. 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

4. 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)
Coordination and Harmonisation of Advanced e-Infrastructures for Research and Education Data Sharing (CHAIN-REDS)
Promoting African European Research Infrastructure Partnerships (PAERIP)
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)
Exchange Programme for e-Infrastructure Know-How (EPIKH)
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)
Global Linkage Over Broadband Links (GLOBAL)
Feasibility Study for African – European Research and Education Network Interconnection (FEAST)
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)
Supporting the development of cooperation on ICT research with sub-Saharan Africa (EuroAfrica-ICT)

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

6. The Sci-GaIA Consortium (www. sci-gaia
The Sci-GaIA Consortium (

7. 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
WP WP WP WP4

8. 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”

9. 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

10. T1.1.1 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for NRENs and Communities of Practice (See all details at
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)

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

12. T1.2 – Science Gateways development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the Winter School (See all details at
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

13. T1.2 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the “SP Course” (See all details at
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

14. T1.2 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the “SP Course” (See all details at
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

15. T1.2 – e-Infrastructure development guidelines and materials for educational programmes – the “SP Course” (See all details at
Courseware:

16. You’re all invited to fill the survey
Task Monitor the successful implementation and uptake of e-Infrastructures in Africa (See
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

17. Certified “Grid“ sites in 6 countries :
T1.4 – Africa & Arabia Regional Operations Centre (AAROC): Site interoperability (
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

18. 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

19. 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

20. The forum is meant to be an open environment where to discuss about:
T The e-Infrastructure discussion forum (
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

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

22. 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 (
More on CoPs supported in the next presentations

23. 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

24. 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.

25. 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)

26. T3. 2 – Federated services supported/deployed (See full list at www
T3.2 – Federated services supported/deployed (See full list at      

27. 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

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

29. 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

30. Task Branding and dissemination/communication material – The Sci-GaIA website (

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

32. T4. 1 – The Dakar Declaration on Open Science in Africa (www. sci-gaia
T4.1 – The Dakar Declaration on Open Science in Africa (

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

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

35. Application form still open and grants available!
T4.2 – Training – Next event: the WACREN e-Research Hackfest (
Application form still open and grants available!
More on past training in the next presentations

36. Thank you!
sci-gaia.eu