Africa@home is a website that allow users to use their home computers to contribute for
humanitarian
Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional ...
causes at Africa. This project first went public on 13 July 2006. It partners with
Swiss Tropical Institute, the
University of Geneva
The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin as a theological seminary. It remained focused on theology until the 17th centu ...
,
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
, and
ICVolunteers
ICVolunteers ( ICVolontaires / ICVoluntarios) is an international non-profit organization (federation) active in the field of communications, in particular cybervolunteerism, languages and conference support. ICVolunteers works with volunteers ...
(ICV). It is sponsored by the
Geneva International Academic Network (
GIAN
Gian is a masculine Italian given name. It is a variant of Gianni and is likewise used as a diminutive of Giovanni, the Italian form of John.
In Italian, any name including Giovanni can be contracted to Gian, particularly in combination with other ...
).
Africa@home together with ICVolunteers, recruited volunteers across Africa to help with the project. The
Malaria Control Project (MCP) was the first and the only
volunteer computing
Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...
project ran by Africa@home.
MCP ran for 10 years and became inactive since 21 June 2016.
See also
*
Malaria Control Project
*
List of volunteer computing projects
This is a comprehensive list of volunteer computing projects; a type of distributed computing where volunteers donate computing time to specific causes. The donated computing power comes from idle CPUs and GPUs in personal computers, video game co ...
*
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing (a type of distributed computing). Developed originally to support SETI@home, it beca ...
(BOINC)
*
Volunteer computing
Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...
*
Grid computing
Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from co ...
*
Geneva International Academic Network
References
International development in Africa
Health in Africa
Volunteer computing projects
Science in society
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