(mib) The Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques (CSRS)(1) is a platform for scientific research in West Africa and has set up in the Ivory Coast, at Abidjan. The centre devotes most of its resources to projects in the areas of food safety, human nutrition, human and animal parisitology and research on the country's natural flora and fauna. For the main part the centre is funded by the Swiss Academy of Natural Science, which is presided over by ETH Professor Peter Baccini. A number of ETH institutes also support CSRS, for example, with the current projects on yams and manioc or issues surrounding human nutrition and agricultural ecology.

With ETH computers: Willy Müller, Godfather of the Télécentre, Ambassador Johannes Kunz and Education Minister Mamdou Koné Mamadou. Picture: Andres Tschannen. large

The Computer Services department of ETH Zurich (2) is now supporting the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques with fifty discarded computers. These have been collected since autumn 2002 to equip a "Télécentre", which gives scientists access to databases and specialist journals. The origins of the Télécentre stemmed from an initiative of a lawyer from Zurich, Willy Müller, who was Honorary Consul in of the Ivory Coast in Zurich for many years. Using his own private funds he created a foundation for the furtherance of the computer centre. In October – and despite an on-going civil war – construction commenced on the Télécentre. It was inaugurated this year on 7th July.

Libation notable Adiopodoumé: Vor der Eröffnung des Télécentres werden die Ahnen von den hiesigen Chefs mittels Likör gebeten, das Gebäude zu segnen. large

At present the infrastructure consists of 25 computers that ETH Zurich put at the disposition of the centre. They are discarded Pentium II machines that were revised and upgraded. Andres Tschannen, from the ETH Institute of Plant Sciences, who is working on his dissertation at CSRS tells us, "Jean-Pierre Lederer and Giorgio Broggi from the Computer Services department took care of the collection of the computers – because, obviously, they did not all become available at the same time – and prepared them with help of their staff. Of course, all hard disks had to be reformatted in order not to break licensing agreements and to ensure the protection of data."

At the opening ceremony of the Télécentre Johannes Kunz, Swiss Ambassador in Abidjan, emphasised the symbolical nature of this act and the role that CSRS and Switzerland are playing in the country's reconstruction. Mamadou Koné, Minister of Education and Research, made special mention of the importance of the new platform in gaining access to scientific publications. Thanks to the PERI-Initiative (3), he went on to say, the Ivory Coast could soon have access to over 7,500 journals.