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RSSE Africa

About RSSE Africa

Who we are
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RSSE Africa is a forum for research software and infrastructure (compute/data) developers on the African continent. We aim to share skills and opportunities and improve equity, diversity and inclusion within the global research software and systems engineering (RSSE) space.

The term “Research Software Engineer” is not yet widely used in Africa. Regardless of your formal job title, if you are developing software that enables or supports research, this community is for you.

Our vision
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  • Raise awareness of the specific contributions that RSSEs make to research in Africa
  • Organise events for RSSEs on the continent
  • Provide a forum for sharing skills and opportunities within the community
  • Improve equity, diversity and inclusion in the global RSSE space

Are you an RSE?
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Not sure whether this community is for you? If you answer yes to many of the following questions, you are doing the work of a Research Software (or Systems) Engineer:

  • Are you employed to develop software for research?
  • Are you spending more time developing software than conducting research?
  • Are you employed as a postdoctoral researcher, even though you predominantly work on software development?
  • Are you the person who does computers in your research group?
  • Are you sometimes not named on research papers despite playing a fundamental part in developing the software used to create them?
  • Do you lack the metrics needed to progress your academic career, like papers and conference presentations, despite having made a significant contribution through software?

Source: cosden.github.io/what-is-an-rse

What is research software?
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A number of definitions has been used to communicate about research software. For this community we use the definition developed by the FAIR for Research Software working group (FAIR4RS) in 2021:

Research Software includes source code files, algorithms, scripts, computational workflows and executables that were created during the research process or for a research purpose. Software components (e.g., operating systems, libraries, dependencies, packages, scripts, etc.) that are used for research but were not created during or with a clear research intent should be considered software in research and not Research Software. This differentiation may vary between disciplines.

Meet our team or read our history.