Between September 2008 and September 2009, IRD (Research Institute for Development) established a programme of scanning workshops within the SIST project (System for Scientific and Technical Information) of MAEE (French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs). This initiative involved documentation centers and libraries of public institutions (Universities, Research Institutes) in several French-speaking African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia).

The programme enabled the purchase of scanning equipment (fast A4 scanners, PCs, dedicated software) and training teams to digitise documents (theses, articles, books) produced by the staff (researchers, engineers, students) of participating institutions. The Greenstone software was chosen to provide access, over the Internet, to the collections of digital materials. All teams were trained in the installation, administration and use of this tool.

The collections made by the project participants consist of documents in pdf format. Metadata is made available either by incorporating existing bibliographic databases (usually in the CDS/ISIS format) or by direct input into the metadata fields of digital files. In the latter case, the metadata entries include document title, authors, publication date and subject.