21 September 2013 CABI and The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) today announced a strategic collaboration giving 32 African universities access to CAB Abstracts – the leading information service for applied life sciences literature. RUFORUM is a consortium of 32 universities in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa, which was established in 2004, and has been working with CABI since 2012.
The collaboration was announced at a three-day RUFORUM meeting in Kigali. Officially opened by Rwandas Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, the theme of the meeting was Sustaining and Mobilising RUFORUM Universities for Effective Engagement in Agricultural Development and Transformation in Africa.
Comprehensive agricultural research and capacity building in agricultural knowledge management for graduates remains critical, if they are to positively impact the economic development of smallholder farmers. The CABI and RUFORUM partnership aims to strengthen tertiary agricultural education in Africa by providing access to valuable scientific information. This is being accomplished through the provision of special access to the CAB Abstracts database via the CAB Direct interface and CABI Compendia (Crop Protection, Animal Health Production, Aquaculture and Forestry Compendia) to all the 32 universities that make up the RUFORUM consortium.
Universities in the consortium now have access to over 10 million records, including 200,000 full text documents comprising journal articles, conference papers, annual reports, books and book chapters, monographs, newsletters, discussion papers, technical information, field notes and theses. Key subjects covered by the database and compendia include agriculture, animal and veterinary sciences, environmental sciences, plant sciences, microbiology and parasitology, food and nutrition, human health, and leisure and tourism.
This collaboration will improve access to agricultural scientific information, facilitate the training of quality graduate students and produce valuable research responsive to the demands of smallholder farmers.
For more information, please contact David Onyango, Publishing Outreach Officer for CABI in Africa: d.onyango@cabi.org