TEEAL Outreach

 

Training and outreach are integral aspects of the TEEAL Project, with Africa the major priority.

Training in Africa

Since TEEAL was launched in 1999, it has maintained a small office in Harare, Zimbabwe, to make eligible institutions throughout Africa aware of TEEAL, carry out training in the system's installation and use, and help institutions identify funding and write grant proposals to acquire TEEAL sets. In 2004, the TEEAL Africa Office was enlisted by the FAO to coordinate outreach and training for AGORA, and in 2005, it also began to organize training workshops for HINARI, on behalf of the World Health Organization. To reflect this wider mandate, the TEEAL Africa Office has established itself as the Information, Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), responsible now more broadly for support in digital information resources for education and research. ITOCA now has a primary office in South Africa, with a branch office in Harare.

The ITOCA professional staff, led by Gracian Chimwaza, Director and member of the HINARI-AGORA management team, have traveled extensively across Africa, engaged not only in outreach and training, but also as invited participants in international, regional and national-level policy meetings that address information capacity building in Africa. ITOCA has informal regional hubs for training and outreach activities in West Africa and East Africa. These are staffed by Professor Bamidele Fawole of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and Dr. Pamela Marinda at Moi University in Kenya. ITOCA has undertaken outreach and training missions to 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa throughout the last seven years, training over 1,000 scientists, doctors, researchers and information professionals from medical, agriculture and related disciplines.