Account by Aissa Issak

On November, 4, 2009, SABER – The Mozambican Repository [http://www.saber.ac.mz] was launched in a ceremony that took place at Biblioteca Brazão Mazula/Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, the biggest university library in the country.
The idea of having an information repository in Mozambique came to the agenda after a short training course in Open Access and Repositories Building, which was held at the premises of Universidade Politécnica, in July, 2008. This course was delivered by Eloy Rodrigues, from Universidade do Minho, Portugal, who travelled to Mozambique thanks to the financial support of eIFL.net. Two universities, namely Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and Universidade Politécnica provided Eloy´s support during his stay in Mozambique.
For the project proposal, three institutions have joined, Centro de Formação Jurídica e Judiciária, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and Universidade Politécnica, and submitted it to the financial support of QIF, a World Bank Program at the Ministry of Education and Culture. The proposal was approved, and with the budget was possible to purchase the server, to register the domain and to pay some bills regarding the installation of antivirus and other application in the server. This project was coordinated by Aissa Issak, from Universidade Politécnica.
With the technical support of Serviços de Documentação from Universidade do Minho, DSPACE was installed and the entries start to be put in the repository. In terms of content, it is possible to find thesis and dissertation, journal articles, papers and other materials written by Mozambican researchers and lecturers or about Mozambique to support the teaching, learning and research process in the country and outside, since the weak access to information about Mozambique or other African countries is very well known.
So far, this type of materials was still hidden within the Universities and this repository represents a hope to find and use materials written by Mozambican researchers and about Mozambique. After the launching ceremony, we hope that more people will join the project and submit their contents to the repository.
Although only three institutions embraced the project, during the launching ceremony, Aissa Issak, the project coordinator, encouraged other universities and research institutions to join the repository and have their own collections available.

From eIFL.net, congratulations to the Centro de Formação Jurídica e Judiciária, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and Universidade Politécnica with the national Mozambican Repository http://www.saber.ac.mz! And thank you to the Minho University, Portugal, for the support!