In 2012, at the Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC) experts concluded that greater investment is necessary to better co-ordinate data management systems, and that this in turn would provide the impetus for other innovative tools to monitor and manage biological resources. Well thought out data management systems can rapidly improve our knowledge base and radically increase data retrieval and analysis efficiency. For understanding global biodiversity patterns, it is of particular importance to use such innovative approaches given the the substantial gaps in knowledge that exist. This is particularly the case for the Eastern Afromontane region where we have a poor knowledge of species and their distributions in addition to the increasing threat from habitat destruction and changes.

Here we propose to implement a data management system for collecting, processing, analysing and promoting biodiversity data for the poorly known Mozambican region. This will  complement our established projects in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Kenya. We focus on amphibians and reptiles given their poor understanding, high conservation threat, our expertise and the growing data availability and resources. We will implement the data management system to Mozambique by training colleagues at the Faculty of Natural Sciences - Lúrio University who we have established links with. We will first have an exchange visit with the visiting Scientist (Farooq) visiting Basel and the Biogeography Research Group (Loader, and Nagel) to be trained in database management and molecular techniques. This will be followed by supervisor of the visiting scientist (Loader) visiting Mozambique and following up training, and giving lecturers to hosts group and colleagues and establishing protocols for establishing a network in Mozambique. Follow up visit by Loader will be necessary to ensure the project is meeting expecting goals and finalize results in a planned workshop. We expect that this will then provide an impetus for increasing knowledge on biodiversity and a spring-board for future funding between collaborating research groups.