Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA)

ITOCA undertakes capacity building for academic and scientific communities in Africa by drawing on technology and face-to-face exchanges that aim to strengthen research, through activities such as the following:

• Offering outreach and marketing of relevant ICT tools and programmes;
• Providing customised programme consultancy and support for universities, government departments, communities of practice, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and research institutions;
• Assisting institutions in developing and formulating grant proposals for information programmes;
• Holding institutional and national training workshops, seminars, and capacity building programmes;
• Providing tailored training for information resource programmes such as The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL), Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), and Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI); specifically:
  
  • TEEAL is a scholarly scientific database developed specifically for agricultural and natural resource scientists, lecturers, and students in developing countries by Cornell University in association with the Rockefeller Foundation. TEEAL, available on CD-ROM, gives access to full-text literature from publishers worldwide.
  • AGORA is an initiative to provide free access to scientific journals in agriculture and related biological, environmental, and social sciences to public institutions in developing countries.
  • HINARI provides free or very low cost online access to the major journals in biomedical and related social sciences to local, not-for-profit institutions in developing countries.
• Partnering with international organisations working in research development; and
• Providing technical support to implemented programmes at participating institutions.

Agriculture, Technology.

According to organisers, many agricultural and medical libraries in developing countries have not received any learned journals in over 10 years. Other such libraries have been destroyed by war or economic and/or political havoc. Without access to current scientific information, scientists and doctors struggle to keep up with advances in science and technology, to publish their own findings in peer-reviewed journals, to update their teaching curricula, and to find funding. The demand for access to scientific literature in developing countries has gone unfulfilled for many years, organisers claim, which has led to the isolation of a generation of scientists from their peers.

It is for this reason that ITOCA focuses on providing the research and academic communities with affordable access to up-to-date published scientific scholarly literature and helps develop the required relevant skills. The organisation contends that, through this access, developing countries stand to benefit in terms of improved research and development programmes which lead to benefits such as increased food production and food security.