“I’m very passionate about open science.  From where I stand in the context of Africa, there’s so much data we create in government, universities or communities. But at the moment, data, which is the base for reports and provides evidence for government decisions, is not accessible to all except the researcher and specialist research reference committees.  The Botswana Government has a closed research culture, as does the local research community within the academic and private sector circles.  As a librarian, that has always been my concern.  When work is done in that way, you find that the resultant data is archived and owned by the funding authority.

The current system is dysfunctional due to a lack of regulatory mechanisms, appropriate follow-up processes and systems for creating national open databases. Without reliable databases for research reports, research data cannot be open or accessible.”