The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) African partner countries, namely, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia, led by South Africa, have started building the capabilities to process, store and disseminate data produced by telescopes such as the KAT-7, the AVN and others.

Senior officials are meeting at Misty Hills Conference Centre, west of Johannesburg, ahead of the annual SKA Africa Partner Countries Ministerial Meeting, which takes place tomorrow.

Up to now, the focus has been on telescope infrastructure in partner countries, but this alone would not be very helpful unless the countries can perform science with the data collected by the telescopes. The idea is to train African students, researchers and scientists to use science data from existing telescopes, as well as new data emerging from AVN observatories, with the first to be in Ghana.

Science data from telescopes could be made available through research data networks, and this work can also be linked to various regional efforts to create high-performance computing competence and facilities, such as the UbuntuNet Alliance (the regional research and education networking organisation for Eastern and Southern Africa).

According to Dr Happy Sithole, Head of the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Cape Town, who made a presentation at today's Senior Official's Meeting, the focus of the Big Data Africa Programme (BDAP) is on developing high-performance computing capabilities in partner countries. The BDAP consists of three main components, namely, High Performance Computing (HPC), Data Infrastructures for SKA Africa and the Newton Fund AVN Programme.

The CHPC has been engaged in developing HPC capabilities in Africa and progress has been made in the following ways:

• Creating discussion forums to develop an African Framework on HPC. These discussions culminated in a SADC HPC Framework, which has been adopted by the SADC Ministerial Committee on Science and Technology
• Facilitating access for African researchers and students to HPC training programmes in South Africa.
• Providing access to HPC facilities for researchers on the continent to pursue research in various science and engineering domains.
• Through the partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the University of Cambridge, parts of the HPC systems have been provided to African countries to develop computing capabilities. Currently, Botswana, Zambia, and Mauritius have received parts of the computing clusters, and representatives from these countries have undergone training in building and operating these HPC  systems.

The CHPC will be focusing their interventions on data processing capability and skills and data analysis tools, while the partner organisation, the South African National Research Network(SANReN), will develop interventions pertaining to connectivity challenges of partner institutions.

These aspects will be crucial for the readiness of African partners to effectively contribute to the roll-out and operation of the SKA, and may also allow their citizens to benefit through participating in scientific investigations and having access to supporting infrastructure.