Academic literature on the topic 'Great Journeys (series)'

This is the first in a Maternity Voices series about those in the maternity space that have become published authors. I decided on this series as last year I became a published author of a book and it made me reflect on my journey to that point and wonder what other authors journeys have been like. I hope this series is inspirational for you all and maybe encourage you to also explore putting your experiences down on the page! I have a great line up of authors for you and we start with the story of Pixie Willo. Pixie is a mother and poet and published her first book of poetry in 2020. ‘In Clarity’s Absence’ Buy Book here Her next book of poetry based on open text comments from the Birth Experience Study national survey is due for release mid-2023.

Before 2005, Michael Portillo was a reviled populist, right-wing British Conservative politician. Seemingly, he is a now a mellowed national treasure due largely to his approachable, friendly, prolific series of travelogues, Great British Railway Journeys (2010‐present). This multi-series documentary has been a remarkable BBC success: delivering upbeat music, dynamic camera work, a repetitive format, rosy-tinted Victoriana and celebratory subject matter, the programme makers ensure that the programme is feel-good, cosy, nostalgic and soothing. But Portillo’s political inclinations are apparent: Portillo, sometimes quite subtly, expresses consistently his passion for free enterprise, for the supposed benefits of historical colonialism, for the monarchy, for the military and for social liberalism. A believer in an enterprise-encouraging small state and in personal liberty and social mobility, Portillo’s politics chime in directly with the current thinking of the Conservative Party leadership. In short, the apparently benign travelogue series promotes Portillo’s mainstream post-Thatcherite British Conservatism: an analysis of the ubiquitous programme’s understated but clear Conservatism counters right-wing accusations about the BBC’s alleged leftist bias.

Japan-China cultural ties in the late 1970s and early 1980s received a powerful impetus for development against the background of deepening interstate relations in 1970s. In this period, it had begun the turn of Chinese foreign policy towards increasing ties with market economy countries. Traditionally, cultural transfer from China to Japan was a mainstream in the interrelations of the two countries, but during 20th century political relations and cultural dialogue experienced a series of dramatic changes. After the end of World War II, despite ideological contradictions, cultural contacts between China and Japan expanded steadily. This article aims to study the travels of prominent and award-winning Japanese novelist Inoue Yasushi to northwest China in 1977–1980 as an attempt by Japan to expand its participation in Asian affairs and to consider in detail the multi-ethnic and multicultural China. To view and understand real China. The main source of the analysis and reconstruction of the travel route is a travelogue “My travel notes to Western Regions” (Watashi no seiki kiko:, in 2 vols) published in 1983. This study summarizes information about Inoue Yasushi’s travels to the Chinese part of Turkestan, clarifies the gradual deepening of cultural dialogue between Japan and China and examines the images of the ancient cities of the Great Silk Road, which the writer, known for his loyalty to China, created through a nostalgic “view into the past” in order to explain the cultural unity and specifics of the region as part of China.

Landscape quality is a crucial factor for the heritage attractiveness of tourism, allowing tourists to experience both natural and cultural aspects along railway journeys. Moreover, railway landscape is a comprehensive system that defines the landscape observed and perceived by passengers and is characterized by the diversity and continuity of the train’s movement. Yunnan-Vietnam railway (YVR) heritage is the research object of this research, whose area encompasses various landscape types and heritage sites, providing great landscape enjoyment. Currently, the assessment methods specifically for railway landscape have been discussed less than for other landscape types, especially for a series of large linear sites like the YVR. To evaluate the value of railway heritage landscape along the railway, this paper proposes a methodology combining the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Delphi method, and GIS as an integrated spatial assessment. Creatively, this paper seeks to: (1) discuss the relationship between railway and landscape; (2) build a comprehensive evaluation system for the railway heritage landscape, covering the topics of history, tourism, ecology, heritage, social-culture, and visual quality; (3) quantify the landscape value of the YVR areas. Thus, the results of this research can be useful to future urban planning, development, and policymaking.

Arab stage plays took their time in the development and making their place in the world throughout the ancient times. The article shines a light on the phases and struggles Arab theatre went through in making such majestic art and performances that are a source of entertainment for people from all over the world. Mainly the struggles were because of religious issues that initiated many other issues like the censorship and not having enough popularity in the Arab states that put up a limit to the theatre establishments forcing the artists to make journeys in order to seek their audience as many things did not sit well in the mindsets of the religious Arabs. However, later on, the theatre started stretching its roots in the hearts of the audience. Performances like Shadow Puppetry and Passion plays took over many viewers and became an important part of the Arab culture. One of the most important eras in the history of Arabic drama development was that of the Egyptian era, which holds a reputation to this time and tells a lot of religious and historic stories through its innovative art play. The article also highlights the great contribution of Ibn Danyal Al-Khuzai to the plays through his three phenomenal theatre scripts that were enacted upon by many diverse cultures and ethnicities, furthermore, the influence Western drama culture made in Arab states and its impact that came with series of events.

The journey of Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean is one of American history's great survival stories. The journals that Lewis, Clark, and other members of the company kept detail that trek. Gunther Barth's The Lewis and Clark Expedition, a volume in the Bedford Series in History and Culture, is a sampler of these journals. Barth uses the journals to describe the challenges facing the Corps of Discovery, and to illustrate Jeffersonian-era society and culture.

Государственные, народные и культурные границы в мемуарной прозе Юлиана Урсын-НемцевичаУроженец деревни Скоки Брест-Литовского округа Юлиан Урсын-Немцевич в жизни принадлежал к группе людей, необыкновенно интересующихся миром, следствием чего были его многочисленные путешествия по Европе и Америке. Он странствовал, добровольно или под принуждением, по Старому Свету от Сицилии до Скандинавии и от Лондона до Петербурга, совершил экскурсию на Ниагарский водопад, посетил индейские и негритянские деревни Земли Вашингтона и потому, что не чувствовал себя спокойно при мысли, что лучше познал чужие края, чем землю отцов, в 1811 году предпринял цикл исторических путешествий по Польше, в которых, кроме туристических целей, хотел проявить свой гражданский протест против установления в 1772 году границ государствами-захватчиками на земле Речи Посполитой Обоих Народов. Постоянно в сообщениях парламентарных, корреспондентских и литературных он протестовал против административной демаркационной линии, с трудом её пересекал, придерживаясь принципа, что границы Польши раз и навсегда установили пястовские и ягеллонские правители. Он не соглашался с любыми их изменениями и ограничениями и не признал утрату государственных границ в 1795 году. Более всего он сопротивлялся нарушению границ, разделяющих первоначально Варшавское Княжество, а потом Королевство Польское и Российскую империю. State, national and cultural borders in Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s memorial prose Born in Skoki, near Brest, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz was part of a group of people in the Enlightenment period who were exceptionally interested in the world, which led to his numerous travels across Europe and America. He travelled, voluntarily or under coercion, across the Old Continent, from Sicily to Scandinavia, and from London to St. Petersburg; he went on a trip to Niagara Falls, visited Indian and Negro villages in the Washington Land, and, feeling uncomfortable with the idea that he had got to know foreign lands better than his fatherland, in 1811 he embarked on a series of historical journeys across Poland, during which, in addition to pursuing tourist goals, he wanted to manifest his civic objection to the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. In his accounts memoirs, letters and literary works he consistently challenged administrative demarcation lines, crossing them with great difficulty, faithful as he was to the belief that Poland’s borders had been set once and for all by rulers from the Houses of Piast and Jagiellon. He accepted no changes of the borders and reduction of the country’s territory, and obviously did not acknowledge the loss of statehood in 1795. What became the most problematic for him was the crossing of the border separating first the Duchy of Warsaw and then the Kingdom of Poland from the Russian Empire.

Astral information appears in a wide variety of cuneiform texts: astronomical manuals, omen series, reports written by celestial diviners to the kings, letters, prayers, and myths. This paper examines one of these myths, Inanna/Ištar’s Descent into the Netherworld, to trace the parallels between Inanna/Ištar’s journey in the netherworld and the planet Venus. The Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ištar is represented in her astral aspect as Venus, who is both the evening star, visible after sunset, and the morning star, visible before sunrise. In the myth, she travels from the ‘great heavens above’ into the netherworld, the ‘great below’, where she passes through seven gates. At each gate, she is symbolically stripped of her divine radiance (mêlammū) by the removal of her clothing and adornments. She is held prisoner by the queen of the netherworld, her older sister, Ereškigal. During the goddess’ captivity, procreation and fertility of the land cease. She is eventually rescued and released in exchange for her lover, Dumuzi/Tammuz, who must reside half of the year in the netherworld in her place. Though the myth is traditionally understood as a seasonal aetiology, with its familiar ancient Mediterranean dying-rising god motif, and as the Mesopotamians’ conception of afterlife, using iconographic representations and linguistic comparisons with the astral omen texts, another interpretation explaining the movements and periodic disappearance of Venus is noticeable.

China's Great Bay Area covers Hong Kong S.A.R, Macau S.A.R, Shenzhen, and many other cities in Guangdong Province and is one of China's most economically prosperous areas. Thousands of people start their businesses in this area every year. It is a well-known belief that knowledge management can help business success; however, start-up companies may face many issues in applying knowledge management to achieve their success. Therefore, this study examines the challenges and problems of knowledge management implementation in start-up companies in this region. Conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with owners of start-up companies, this study tries to find several challenges of these companies, such as a lack of knowledge management systems and expertise in the domain. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the knowledge management challenges of start-up companies in China’s Great Bay Area. It also provides significant managerial implications that can help these companies to embark on the knowledge management journey successfully.

Chinese culture, to readers of English, is somewhat veiled in mystery. Fundamentals of Chinese Culture, a classic of great insight and profundity by noted Chinese thinker, educator and social reformist Liang Shuming, takes readers on an intellectual journey into the five-thousand-year-old culture of China, the world’s oldest continuous civilization. With a set of "Chinese-style" cultural theories, the book well serves as a platform for Westerners' better understanding of the distinctive worldview of the Chinese people, who value family life and social stability, and for further mutual understanding and greater mutual consolidation among humanities scholars in different contexts, dismantling common misconceptions about China and bridging the gap between Chinese culture and Western culture. As a translation of Liang Shuming’s original text, this book pulls back the curtain to reveal to Westerners a highly complex and nuanced picture of a fascinating people.

AbstractI started my graduate studies, outside my own country of origin (Greece), in 1990 at a time when the whole of Europe was experiencing a reconnection; a new sense of freedom, a novel enthusiasm, a set of landslide social, economic and political changes, similar to a quiet revolution. Migration has been a very important part of this post-1989 ‘revolution’ in Europe. And it has swept me and my post-doctoral studies into it, moving my career compass from the study of minority parties to migration and integration research. This chapter offers a self-reflexive, almost auto-ethnographical account of how my life and my work have been intertwined. I am looking into how my readings and writings have reflected to some extent my experiences while also helping to dissect and analyse those. Naturally my family, my husband and four children, have been drawn, willy nilly, into this great transnational journey. The aim of this chapter, as with our whole book, is to blend the academic with the creative writing in an effort to enrich our understanding of international migrations.

This chapter follows Michael Portillo’s pilgrimage to his late father’s native Spain as part of the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys. Luis Gabriel Portillo was a poet and law professor who stayed loyal to the Republican government when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. A liberal intellectual and a Catholic idealist, he refused to carry a rifle at the front for fear of killing one of his brothers, five of whom were enlisted on the Nationalist side. Instead he ran messages as a courier and acted as a political instructor to the troops. In January 1939, shortly before Madrid fell to Franco, he escaped across the Pyrenees, reaching England as an asylum-seeker. For two decades he was unable to set foot in Spain. Michael’s moving Telemachan odyssey took him back to the land of his father’s heroes, to the village of his formative years, to the front line of the civil war, and to the ancient university city of Salamanca, the Ithaca of which Luis dreamt during his long years in exile. The chapter also looks at examples of Luis Portillo’s deeply nostalgic poetry of exile, from his published volume Ruiseñor del destierro.

This chapter examines the mutual relations of palace and city in Byzantium. More specifically, it considers the link between the imperial court within the Great Palace of Constantinople and the local population who called themselves “Byzantines.” Constantine's foundation of a new capital on the site of ancient Byzantion gave rise to a series of epithets for the metropolis: the Queen City, or ruling city, basileuontas polis, as it became known, or simply “the city.” In Constantinople “the palace” refers to the “Great Palace,” even though there were many other palaces in the city and suburban region. The chapter describes the occasions when the emperor had contact with three important groups of people who could enter the palace doors: circus factions, soldiers, and merchants. It also discusses two circumstances in which the emperor left the palace: journeys established by imperial protocol for fixed ceremonies, and unplanned visits to the city.

Abstract This final place-based chapter brings the narrative up round the north-west coast of Wales back to Thomas Pennant’s Flintshire home in Holywell. It focuses mainly on the unusual tour of Richard Ayton and William Daniell, whose multivolume Voyage round the Coast of Great Britain was the result of an ambitious series of coastal journeys. The chapter is partly underpinned by materialist theory, drawing on Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s description of the ‘assemblage’ as ‘an open-ended entanglement of ways of being’. It begins in Aberystwyth with Ayton and Daniell’s image of the wreck of a ship carrying cotton. It then traces connective threads from mid-Wales to Parys Mountain copper mines on Anglesey, to copper-rolling factories and cotton mills in Greenfield Valley near Holywell, and out across the Atlantic, demonstrating the extent to which Welsh sites of industry, much visited by tourists, were implicated in the trade in enslaved Africans.

This section collects the essays “Tracking Changes and Corrections in Bessarion’s Manuscripts” by prof. Sergei Mariev, “The Notata of Giovanni Gatti OP” by prof. John Monfasani, and “The Great Sources of George of Trebizond’s Translation of Plato’s Laws” by prof. Fabio Pagani.

This section collects the essays “Tracking Changes and Corrections in Bessarion’s Manuscripts” by prof. Sergei Mariev, “The Notata of Giovanni Gatti OP” by prof. John Monfasani, and “The Great Sources of George of Trebizond’s Translation of Plato’s Laws” by prof. Fabio Pagani.

Nnedi Okorafor has significantly contributed to the areas of both Afrofuturism and YA literature with her body of work. Her novels and now her novellas (the Binti series) revolve around an exceptional adolescent female of African descent (Okorafor’s Nigerian background is reflected in her characters). Okorafor has her female protagonist venture on the traditional quest of exploration, so that she may establish her identity. Throughout her journey, the female protagonist places great emphasis on her attachment to the land and her community.

This paper argues that: a) philosophy generally, and the dialectical tradition in particular, first emerged in Ancient Greece in response to the nihilism and relativism generated by the development of a market economy; b) despite differences between its 'idealist' and 'materialist' wings, it is possible to speak of a basically unified dialectical tradition extending from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle through the great medieval Aristotelians (Ibn Sina, Ibn Rusd, Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas), up to Hegel, Marx and their interpreters, a tradition unified around the proposition that we can rise by rational means to a first principle which in turn serves as a principle of value and a criterion for ethical norms, thus becoming a standard by which to criticize the market order and argue for an alternative allocation of resources; c) the historic difficulties and current crisis of the dialectical tradition arise from a failure to demonstrate that the universe is a teleological system ordered to the perfection of form or the development of increasing levels of organization; and d) recent developments in the physical, biological and social sciences suggest that we may soon be in a position to remedy this difficulty. This paper criticizes those who say that it is no longer possible to "do philosophy the old way," and argues for the critical importance of philosophy generally and the dialectical tradition in particular for the future of the human civilizational project.

Abstract This chapter unfolds the story of Sajjad Kishwar, a great artist, born in Ludhiana who found endless fame in the Pakistan television and radio industry. From the carpet of leaves leading to his school to the red carpet of the entertainment industry, he’s seen it all. He recalls his exhausting journey of migration guarded by the Baloch Army to Rawalpindi. His career started with ‘Raizgari’ while working with PTV studios, leading him to win a series of never-ending accolades. This is the Red Carpet, a rags-to-riches story of an artist whose art did know no boundaries and how his dogged determination was finally paid off.

Abstract Virginia Woolf read Greek with a passion, beginning in 1897 with a series of private tutors and continuing on her own for many years. In the early journals collected in A Passionate Apprentice, Woolf fondly described her Greek lessons with Miss Janet Case, whose favorite writers were Aeschylus and Euripides: she taught Woolf that ‘Aeschylus was strenuous, grand, impassioned’.1 Their tutorials included some ‘strenuous’ readings in Aeschylean tragedy, with Woolf reporting in 1903: ‘a great Xea jumped on to my Aeschylus as I read with Case the other day— and now bites large holes in me.’2 Bitten by the bug, Woolf also jumped into Aeschylus, making her way through the Greek text in leaps and bounds, despite large holes in her comprehension.

The topic is important, difficult, tedious, burdensome ... Nothing changes here, ever. Dying, fear, pain, suffering, anxiety, apathy ... No one is exempt from that "story". Death is necessary. Life always ends in death. It is a journey into the unknown which, from the point of view of a long and happy life, produces great disorder and fierce frustrations. A series of big attitudes is simply imposed. Opinions are exaggerated in one direction or another. Black and white!? In fact, the stupid extremes, even the "ways" used in doing so, were for many worthy of a "merciful" end to life. Life itself, the author points out, directs us to reject all theoretical extremes. However, it seems to us that we would not have done better in this field, even under more moderate, much more favorable conditions. In that too much confusion, it's just important to keep a little more rational !? The "right solution", or if we want "satisfactory" will already come up !? In that context, with the risk of repeating some of what was said, our attention was specifically drawn to the punishment of the perpetrator of the relevant act in Italian law. It should be noted that the picture provided by the study of this complex and provocative issue is in fact a mirror of the specific relationship between legislative solutions, especially in the area of responsibility and punishment of the main actors of "euthanasia" and "suicide assistance", and complicated life situations. which they will, we shall see, differ considerably. Finally, as the author points out, the views discussed here seem to provide an opportunity to open up some new vistas, it may shed light on the problem from a different perspective and offer a different way of resolving the aforementioned, very complex and difficult issues that arise in connection with it.

This report maps the African landscape of Open Science – with a focus on Open Data as a sub-set of Open Science. Data to inform the landscape study were collected through a variety of methods, including surveys, desk research, engagement with a community of practice, networking with stakeholders, participation in conferences, case study presentations, and workshops hosted. Although the majority of African countries (35 of 54) demonstrates commitment to science through its investment in research and development (R&D), academies of science, ministries of science and technology, policies, recognition of research, and participation in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI), the following countries demonstrate the highest commitment and political willingness to invest in science: Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. In addition to existing policies in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), the following countries have made progress towards Open Data policies: Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, South Africa and Uganda. Only two African countries (Kenya and South Africa) at this stage contribute 0.8% of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to R&D (Research and Development), which is the closest to the AU’s (African Union’s) suggested 1%. Countries such as Lesotho and Madagascar ranked as 0%, while the R&D expenditure for 24 African countries is unknown. In addition to this, science globally has become fully dependent on stable ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) infrastructure, which includes connectivity/bandwidth, high performance computing facilities and data services. This is especially applicable since countries globally are finding themselves in the midst of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), which is not only “about” data, but which “is” data. According to an article1 by Alan Marcus (2015) (Senior Director, Head of Information Technology and Telecommunications Industries, World Economic Forum), “At its core, data represents a post-industrial opportunity. Its uses have unprecedented complexity, velocity and global reach. As digital communications become ubiquitous, data will rule in a world where nearly everyone and everything is connected in real time. That will require a highly reliable, secure and available infrastructure at its core, and innovation at the edge.” Every industry is affected as part of this revolution – also science. An important component of the digital transformation is “trust” – people must be able to trust that governments and all other industries (including the science sector), adequately handle and protect their data. This requires accountability on a global level, and digital industries must embrace the change and go for a higher standard of protection. “This will reassure consumers and citizens, benefitting the whole digital economy”, says Marcus. A stable and secure information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure – currently provided by the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) – is key to advance collaboration in science. The AfricaConnect2 project (AfricaConnect (2012–2014) and AfricaConnect2 (2016–2018)) through establishing connectivity between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), is planning to roll out AfricaConnect3 by the end of 2019. The concern however is that selected African governments (with the exception of a few countries such as South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia and others) have low awareness of the impact the Internet has today on all societal levels, how much ICT (and the 4th Industrial Revolution) have affected research, and the added value an NREN can bring to higher education and research in addressing the respective needs, which is far more complex than simply providing connectivity. Apart from more commitment and investment in R&D, African governments – to become and remain part of the 4th Industrial Revolution – have no option other than to acknowledge and commit to the role NRENs play in advancing science towards addressing the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals). For successful collaboration and direction, it is fundamental that policies within one country are aligned with one another. Alignment on continental level is crucial for the future Pan-African African Open Science Platform to be successful. Both the HIPSSA ((Harmonization of ICT Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa)3 project and WATRA (the West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly)4, have made progress towards the regulation of the telecom sector, and in particular of bottlenecks which curb the development of competition among ISPs. A study under HIPSSA identified potential bottlenecks in access at an affordable price to the international capacity of submarine cables and suggested means and tools used by regulators to remedy them. Work on the recommended measures and making them operational continues in collaboration with WATRA. In addition to sufficient bandwidth and connectivity, high-performance computing facilities and services in support of data sharing are also required. The South African National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System5 (NICIS) has made great progress in planning and setting up a cyberinfrastructure ecosystem in support of collaborative science and data sharing. The regional Southern African Development Community6 (SADC) Cyber-infrastructure Framework provides a valuable roadmap towards high-speed Internet, developing human capacity and skills in ICT technologies, high- performance computing and more. The following countries have been identified as having high-performance computing facilities, some as a result of the Square Kilometre Array7 (SKA) partnership: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Tunisia, and Zambia. More and more NRENs – especially the Level 6 NRENs 8 (Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and recently Zambia) – are exploring offering additional services; also in support of data sharing and transfer. The following NRENs already allow for running data-intensive applications and sharing of high-end computing assets, bio-modelling and computation on high-performance/ supercomputers: KENET (Kenya), TENET (South Africa), RENU (Uganda), ZAMREN (Zambia), EUN (Egypt) and ARN (Algeria). Fifteen higher education training institutions from eight African countries (Botswana, Benin, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, and Tanzania) have been identified as offering formal courses on data science. In addition to formal degrees, a number of international short courses have been developed and free international online courses are also available as an option to build capacity and integrate as part of curricula. The small number of higher education or research intensive institutions offering data science is however insufficient, and there is a desperate need for more training in data science. The CODATA-RDA Schools of Research Data Science aim at addressing the continental need for foundational data skills across all disciplines, along with training conducted by The Carpentries 9 programme (specifically Data Carpentry 10 ). Thus far, CODATA-RDA schools in collaboration with AOSP, integrating content from Data Carpentry, were presented in Rwanda (in 2018), and during17-29 June 2019, in Ethiopia. Awareness regarding Open Science (including Open Data) is evident through the 12 Open Science-related Open Access/Open Data/Open Science declarations and agreements endorsed or signed by African governments; 200 Open Access journals from Africa registered on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); 174 Open Access institutional research repositories registered on openDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories); 33 Open Access/Open Science policies registered on ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies); 24 data repositories registered with the Registry of Data Repositories (re3data.org) (although the pilot project identified 66 research data repositories); and one data repository assigned the CoreTrustSeal. Although this is a start, far more needs to be done to align African data curation and research practices with global standards. Funding to conduct research remains a challenge. African researchers mostly fund their own research, and there are little incentives for them to make their research and accompanying data sets openly accessible. Funding and peer recognition, along with an enabling research environment conducive for research, are regarded as major incentives. The landscape report concludes with a number of concerns towards sharing research data openly, as well as challenges in terms of Open Data policy, ICT infrastructure supportive of data sharing, capacity building, lack of skills, and the need for incentives. Although great progress has been made in terms of Open Science and Open Data practices, more awareness needs to be created and further advocacy efforts are required for buy-in from African governments. A federated African Open Science Platform (AOSP) will not only encourage more collaboration among researchers in addressing the SDGs, but it will also benefit the many stakeholders identified as part of the pilot phase. The time is now, for governments in Africa, to acknowledge the important role of science in general, but specifically Open Science and Open Data, through developing and aligning the relevant policies, investing in an ICT infrastructure conducive for data sharing through committing funding to making NRENs financially sustainable, incentivising open research practices by scientists, and creating opportunities for more scientists and stakeholders across all disciplines to be trained in data management.