About Bakeng se Afrika
Bakeng se Afrika has the main goal of developing a digital repository of human skeletal remains. Creation of Professor Anna Oettlé from Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University and Professor Ericka L’Abbé from the Forensic Anthropology Research Centre at the University of Pretoria, this project was made possible through the association of six higher education institutions (three South African and three European) and the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa).
In 2018, it was awarded the Capacity Building Grant in Higher Education (Erasmus+) from the European Union. The project launched in 2019, being active up to this day.
Bakeng se Afrika starts knowing that the development of online tools in health sciences and life sciences fields is key for the future of teaching and research.
This pioneering project aims to:
- To collect a large digital repository (micro-XCT, Lodox Statscan, and CBCT scans) of identified South African osteological collections, and make them globally available.
- To establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) for scanning of bones and for storage and analyses of digital data.
- To define regulation on the ethical use of digital scans of human remains.
- To make the repository globally available to researchers and educators.
Partners
Funding

Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union