The Digital Research Environment (DRE) is the digital infrastructure unit of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth. We design, build, and maintain the data systems that connect researchers across the Africa Multiple Research Centres (AMRCs) and partner institutions worldwide. Our work spans research data management, knowledge graph development, AI-assisted data processing, and digital literacy – all grounded in the FAIR and CARE principles and a commitment to multiple knowledge systems.

Two principles guide how we work. Curation and description are a joint effort with partners at the AMRCs in Ouagadougou, Rhodes, Lagos, and Moi: each centre describes the data it knows best, and the DRE runs the shared infrastructure that connects them. Storage, in turn, stays distributed by default: data remains in its local repository, while Bayreuth holds the metadata layer that points to it. Research data becomes findable without being relocated.

The AMRCs and partner institutions hold substantial research collections and datasets. The DRE team works with each centre to assess the scope, nature, quality, and size of this data, and to determine what can be linked to our platform. High-quality metadata makes researchers' data more discoverable, and their work more visible to a wider community of peers. All this metadata comes together in the Africa Multiple Interactive Research Atlas (AMIRA), an Omeka S site that makes the collections of the AMRCs and their partners searchable from one place.

Get in touch: africamultiple-digital@uni-bayreuth.de