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28 November 2001
ODINAFRICA and GOOS-Africa organize joint Session on 20 November 2001

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The ODINAFRICA project will provide a framework to cater for ocean data and information management requirements of a wide variety of projects in ocean sciences, ocean services and operational oceanography. In Africa the first examples could be GOOS-Africa and GLOSS. It is bearing this in mind that ODINAFRICA proposed to organize a joint Session with GOOS-Africa. This event was organized on 20 November 2001 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Session was started with a presentation by Mr Peter Pissierssens, Head Ocean Services IOC, on the IOC's IODE Programme. Mr Pissierssens explained the structure and activities of the IODE programme. He informed the meeting about the new IODE capacity building strategy which is based on linking equipment, training and operational support.

The Session was then addressed by Mr Mika Odido, ODINAFRICA Regional Coordinator for the IOCINCWIO region. He provided a brief history of the ODINAFRICA project, mentioning its predecessors RECOSCIX-WIO (Regional Cooperation in Scientific Information Exchange in the Western Indian Ocean region, a project that provided information servics to ocean scientists in the IOCINCWIO region between 1989 and 1999), the ODINEA project (Ocean Data and Information Network for Eastern Africa, a project that developed ocean data management capability in Eastern Africa), explaining that the experience of these projects had enabled the planing for the Pan-African ODINAFRICA project. The ODINAFRICA project proposal had been drafted by a core group of African countries in 1998 and subsequently submitted to the Flemish Government within the framework of the UNESCO-Flanders cooperation agreement. Initially all African IOC Member States had been invited to participate in the project. 18 had responded initially. An additional two were added during the year 2000. Mr Odido then proceeded listing the objectives of the ODINAFRICA project.

Dr Sekou Cisse, ODINAFRICA Regional Coordinator for the IOCEA region informed the Session about the results of the Second ODINAFRICA Review and Planning Workshop that was held the previous week (between 13 and 17 November) and was attended by all but two National Coordinators (Gabon and Morocco were unable to attend). He reported that the Session had been most productive, drafting the workplan and budget for 2002. Nearly all ODINAFRICA Partners had been able to organize national coordination workshops, where the ODINAFRICA project informed all possible national stakelholders of the objectives of the project. One data management and one information management training course were organized in 2001 involving nearly all partner countries. During 2001 also, nearly 60 PCs were provided to the Partner institutions.The Meeting had agreed to organize the next Review workshop in November 2002, kindly hosted by Cameroun. The next data and information management training courses will be organized back-to-back with a one or two day overlap in April 2002.

The Meeting was then addressed by Dr Larry Awosika who shared some views on possible collaboration between ODINAFRICA and GOOS.

Author: P.Pissierssens
Item: 20011104