AMIRA — Africa Multiple Research Data MCP server

AMIRA MCP Server

Read-only Model Context Protocol server for the Africa Multiple Interactive Research Atlas (AMIRA), the research-data platform of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth. AMIRA is published on the cluster's public Omeka S site at data.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de.

AMIRA is built and maintained by the Cluster's Digital Research Environment (DRE), its digital infrastructure unit. The DRE designs, builds, and maintains the data systems that connect researchers across the Africa Multiple Research Centres (AMRCs) and partner institutions worldwide. Curation and description are joint efforts with partners at the AMRCs in Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Rhodes University, the University of Lagos, and Moi University. Bayreuth hosts the coordinating DRE infrastructure and metadata layer. Federal University of Bahia is a privileged partner, not an AMRC.

Storage stays distributed by default: data remains in its local repository, while Bayreuth holds the metadata layer that points to it. Research data becomes findable without being relocated. High-quality metadata makes researchers' data more discoverable and their work more visible to a wider community of peers.

This server exposes AMIRA's projects, thematic research sections, ~4,000 digitised research items, people, institutions, groups, collections, the cluster bibliography with searchable full text (extracted from the open-access PDFs) and its journals, podcast episodes with transcripts, and the cluster's YouTube videos with searchable transcripts — as 33 core tools an LLM can query, five research-workflow prompts, and resources for citable records and bulk exports. From one MCP interface, clients can move across records and the places, languages, and subjects that connect them.

Every record carries an amiraurl — its public page on the Omeka S site (…/s/amira/item/) — so findings can be cited as links** back to the source. AMIRA focuses on the Cluster's research data. For news, events, and general information about the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, visit africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de.

Coverage checked 6 October 2026: 3,975 research items (1,419 with digitised media), 93 projects, 555 publications (60 with extracted full text), 87 journals, 43 podcast episodes, 140 videos and 3,085 subject authorities (646 Library of Congress headings). Counts are a dated snapshot; use getcollectionoverview for what your running server actually holds. See the publication guide, the changelog for what each release changed, and the roadmap for further improvements.

How it gets its data — and why nothing else is needed

The server is self-contained and offline-first. It reads from two sources:

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.