Expanding Scientific Knowledge Frontiers: Open repositories in Developing Countries Supported by NRENs Marangaze Munhepe Mulhanga 1 , Solange Rito Lima 1 , Venˆ ancio Massingue 2 , and Jo˜ao Nuno Ferreira 3 1 Centro Algoritmi, Universidade do Minho, Portugal 2 Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Mo¸ cambique 3 Funda¸ c˜ao para a Ciˆ encia e a Tecnologia, Portugal Email: mmunhepe@di.uminho.pt, solange@di.uminho.pt, venancio.massingue@uem.mz, ferreira@fccn.pt Abstract. The current scenario of Internet operation has brought many challenges and opportunities to science as result of the evolution of tech- nologies and network infrastructures, key enablers to information access at distinct levels. Regarding research and teaching, scientific Open Ac- cess (OA) repositories play a key role in the production, dissemination and sharing of knowledge. OA repositories improve the visibility, acces- sibility and availability of results from teaching and research activities, contributing to the knowledge society through the provision of scientific publications without restrictions. Taking worldwide OA initiatives and the Portuguese experience as case study, this paper analyzes technical challenges and strategies for building open repositories supported by National Research and Education Net- works (NRENs) in the African context. Considering Mozambique as the main target of this paper, the study of: (i) existing national and interna- tional initiatives; (ii) MoRENet - the Mozambique Research and Educa- tion Network; and (iii) SABER repository, will support the proposal of a set of directives and policies for the development and sustainability of a common OA platform for scientific and academic national production. We believe that this open repository will bring an undeniable added value for Mozambique knowledge growth, fostering the country development at both scientific and social levels. 1 Introduction Scientific Open Access (OA) repositories aim to provide unrestricted access to academic and scientific literature resorting to information systems that store and give access to data. Therefore, an OA repository is a collection of docu- ments in electronic format, freely available to users through the Internet. The debate on unrestricted access to academic and scientific literature has emerged mainly due to the limitations associated with the marketing of works published on scientific journals. Scientific journals are used as tools to disseminate research