"Tout ce qui a été financé par la collectivité doit être accessible à la collectivité. La science est un bien commun. " Frédérique Vidal, ministre de l'Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation. 

“Anything funded by the community must be accessible to the community. Science is a common good” stated Frédérique Vidal, French Minister for Higher Education, Research and Innovation in her address at the journées nationales de la Science Ouverte (JNSO2018).

At this year’s edition of Digital Infrastructures for Research (DI4R), RDA Europe, OpenAIRE, EOSC-hub, GÉANT and PRACE organised a session on “Building better collaborative national networks” aimed at discussing best practices and challenges of building national net

On the morning of Sunday November 4th, 2018, I arrived from London at the Gaborone International Conference Centre in Botswana. I was there to participate in activities associated with International Data Week 2018, including the 12th Research Data Alliance (RDA) Plenary. This was my ninth time attending an RDA Plenary, my second time participating in International Data Week, but my first time in Africa. My journey here was generously supported by a grant from the RDA Europe 4.0 Experts Programme.

Greetings!

I was immensely pleased to be able to attend this event due to an Expert Researcher Grant from RDA Europe. As always, there were a number of sessions I was looking forward to contributing to, and many people I wanted to see. But this was also the first time that both I and International Data Week had come to Africa, and I knew this would make it a very special meeting.