From 7 April to 16 May 2025, staff from Nigeria’s national research and education network (NgREN) are taking part in an intensive training programme on federated identity and integration with eduGAIN.

The initiative, coordinated by GÉANT as part of the AfricaConnect3 project and co-funded by the European Union, marks an important step forward in integrating Nigeria’s research and education system into the global digital landscape.

The training programme was designed to equip NgREN with the necessary skills to establish a national identity federation and join eduGAIN, the global service that interconnects identity federations in the research and education sector. This will enable users from Nigerian institutions to access international digital resources securely and seamlessly, fostering academic collaboration and simplifying digital identity management.

A European Team Supporting Digital Transformation

The training was delivered by identity federation experts from various networks within the international research community:

• Mario Reale (GÉANT, Netherlands) – who provided strategic insights into how identity federations can strengthen scientific collaboration.
• Marco Malavolti (GARR/IDEM, Italy) – who led technical sessions on federated architectures, with a focus on SAML, Shibboleth, and OpenLDAP.
• Andrijana Todosijevic and Katarina Simonovic (AMRES, Serbia) – who shared best practices for managing federations and introduced tools for the effective implementation of federated services.

GARR and IDEM: Expertise in Support of the Global Community

Thanks to its extensive experience managing the IDEM federation, GARR contributed essential technical and operational expertise, providing its team’s know-how to help strengthen Africa’s digital infrastructure for research and education.

The initiative, which covered topics such as Identity Provider (IdP) and Service Provider (SP) configuration, eduGAIN integration, and best practices in security and privacy, is part of a broader strategy to develop Africa’s digital research infrastructure. It supports the increasing engagement of African NRENs in global networks.

A Model of International Cooperation

The collaboration between GÉANT, NgREN, GARR and other partners highlights the central role of research and education networks in building a secure, interoperable, and inclusive digital ecosystem.

Read more