Designing the Parakou Open Access Box and the Panafrican Institutional Repository

Projet SOHA was funded by OCSDNET , to understand why research done in French African speaking countries and Haïti remains invisible while there is many universities and a lot of researchers working hard to produce knowledge. It appears that the green way of open access can help make our local knowledge more visible and freely accessible everywhere. That is the "raison-d'être"of the Pan-African Institutional Repository (PAIR). To overcome the lack of connectivity, PAIR will be able to work offline or online and be updated periodically (per day/week/month). That is why, we designed a kit called the Parakou Open Access Box, which will provide a local network and allow self archiving on the campus. Besides the institutional repository (PAIR), the kit will also contain many other platforms allowing collaborative work, sharing, data and information storage, etc.