South Sudan has been a GBIF participant since 2018, with the node hosted in the National Ministry of Environment and Forestry. This project aims to build the capacity of the South Sudan GBIF node through a collaboration with KenBIF (the GBIF national node for Kenya) focused on technical training in digitization practices, the GBIF IPT, sharing of policy-relevant data, relevant opportunities across the GBIF community, communication and stakeholder engagement.
Kenya has been a GBIF participant since 2008, frequently participating in node and Governing Board meetings and other biodiversity informatics activities. The Kenyan node received mentoring support from the FinBIF, the GBIF node for Finland, in 2011 and has since established itself as a centre of biodiversity data mobilization.
The staff of the Kenya node “KenBIF” have provided training for other participant nodes and institutions in the region such as Malawi, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania. In 2014, Kenya implemented an instance of the GBIF IPT at the National Museums of Kenya and has since published 64 datasets. The National Museums of Kenya has also published datasets for other organizations locally and regionally. They intend to build on these achievements to mentor newly established GBIF nodes, thereby contributing to the broad mandate of GBIF.
The majority of the specimen data availabe for South Sudan via GBIF is published through other countries whose collections reflect past research in the country. This project will enable South Sudan to manage their own collections and monitor the usage, discoveries and, where possible, repatriation of data and other resources.
