Building data infrastructure with community support

During the CESSDA50 conference, Lynn Woolfrey presented DataFirst as a community-supported data infrastructure to improve access to social science and health data from Governments and research institutions in Africa. She highlighted their recent achievement of setting up the “Remote Access Data Enclave”, which is the only Trusted Research Environment in Africa. She emphasised that future-ready infrastructures rely on sustained community engagement, regional investments, and technical innovation.