UbuntuNet Alliance Equips NRENs to Deliver Dspace-as-a-Service

EthERNet participated in a regional DSpace-as-a-Service (DSaaS) Engineering Bootcamp held in Kigali, Rwanda, from 3–7 August 2026.

Organized by the UbuntuNet Alliance and hosted by the Rwanda Education and Research Network (RwEdNet), the five-day technical training brought together 26 systems and technical professionals from 14 National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) across Eastern and Southern Africa, including EthERNet.

The bootcamp was organized under the project “Unlocking Potential: Elevating Open Institutional Repositories in Africa for Global Impact,” funded by the Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) through its Network Adoption Fund and implemented by UbuntuNet Alliance in partnership with Access 2 Perspectives and member NRENs.

The training focused on building practical technical capacity for deploying, securing, and operating DSpace 9 as a managed service for universities and research institutions. Participants gained hands-on experience in Linux administration, Docker, Kubernetes, DSpace architecture and deployment, repository customization, multi-instance management, security, monitoring, troubleshooting, backup and disaster recovery.

Participants also worked on configuring multiple institutional repository instances on shared infrastructure, implementing HTTPS and reverse-proxy services, enabling OAI-PMH interoperability, and performing backup and restoration exercises. The programme concluded with a production-readiness exercise that brought together the skills developed throughout the training.

For EthERNet, participation in the bootcamp strengthens the Network's technical capacity to support open institutional repositories and research information infrastructure for Ethiopian universities and research institutions. The knowledge gained will contribute to efforts to provide reliable, scalable, and professionally managed digital repository services to the research and higher education community.

The training also provided an opportunity for participating NRENs to exchange technical experience and strengthen regional collaboration, supporting the broader evolution of NRENs from connectivity providers into providers of shared digital services and infrastructure for research and education.

EthERNet's participation in this regional initiative demonstrates its continued commitment to strengthening Ethiopia's digital research infrastructure and improving the accessibility, discoverability, and long-term preservation of research outputs.