History
Togo’s node (GBIF Togo) is hosted by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lomé (Faculté des Sciences, Université de Lomé) and its members are designated their responsibilities by the Ministry for Higher Education and Research (Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche). They include three key roles, the Head of Delegation, the Scientific Advisor for the node and the Node manager.
Since then, the Node Manager has involved the technical support from a specialist in informatics to organize data prior to their publication.
The occurrence data published by GBIF Togo are served via an IPT installation hosted by GBIF France.
Mission
GBIF Togo’s missions are (1) to inform about GBIF, its website, actions and projects; (2) to collect metadata on the primary biodiversity data resources; (3) to inform and train data holders on the GBIF tools and the advantages of becoming visible through GBIF; (4) to organize training events (relating to data publishing, data quality and the use of data available through GBIF); (5) supporting the publishing of data to GBIF.org following the standards, protocols and tools used by GBIF; (6) to promote and facilitate the use of data and tools available through GBIF by data users; and (7) to collaborate with other national and international biodiversity-related institutions, and with the GBIF Secretariat.
Structure
Those currently responsible for the node are based at the University. They have been designated by the Minister for Higher Education and Research.
Other research institutions willing to work with the Node include ITRA from the Ministry of Agriculture (Ministère de l’Agriculture), the Focal Point for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the administration in charge of forests and hunting (Direction Forêts et Chasse), ODEF from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (Ministère de l’Environnement et des Ressources Forestières). Other partners include several University departments.
Funding
Currently the Node has no specific budget for its activities.