Research and Education Networking in Africa Update from the Regions

Session 6e, 8 May 2008 IST-Africa 2008 Copyright 2008 <AAU>

Research and Education Networking in Africa

Update from the Regions

Boubakar Barry

Research and Education Networking UnitAssociation of African Universities

Ghana


Agenda

• About the AAU• Bandwidth issues for African higher education institutions• Established NRENs in Africa• Emerging NRENs in Africa• Other national initiatives• Regional intiatives• Key challenges for R&E Networking in Africa• Towards an African Research and Education Network


About the AAU

• Established in November 1967 in Rabat, Morocco. Based in Accra, Ghana

• 200+ member institutions (public and private), in all African regions

• General Conference once every 4 years, with election of Executive Board

• Conference of Rectors, VCs and Presidents (COREVIP) once every 2 years

• Several programmes and services (Quality Assurance, Mobility, Leadership and Management Development, HIV/AIDS, DATAD, Gender, R&E Networking,...)


About the AAU (cont’d)

• 11th General Conference in February 2005 in Cape Town, SA: four-year Core Programme approved– Prominent among other foci: ICT for higher education – Strong mandate to the Secretariat to act as focal point for ICT

initiatives for African higher education institutions– Focus on R&E Networking for collaboration and improvement of

access to bandwidth at affordable cost, information and knowledge

• REN Unit established in 2006 – Support from the PHEA and IDRC (activities also funded by ACBF) – Activities

• Establishment of strategic partnerships • Organisation of workshops (awareness raising, policy dialogue,

capacity building, etc.); LEDEV • Development of policy guides • Clearinghouse on R&E networking and ICT policy, etc.


Bandwidth issues for African HEIs

• African bandwidth prices probably the highest in the world• Main reasons:

– Lack of competition– Use of costly technologies (VSAT); often no other alternatives– Absence of or inappropriate regulatory frameworks

• Medium bandwidth price in Africa: $5,000 per 1 Mbps• Prices as high as over US$10,000+ per 1 Mbps• Average bandwidth cost for an US university: $120/Mbps• Consequence: Most African universities don’t have the

bandwidth available to single households in the developed world


Bandwidth issues for African HEIs (cont’d)

• Efforts in some countries to apply lower tariffs for the Education sector; but prices still prohibitive

• Some short term solutions to improve bandwidth access and usage:– Bandwidth consortia; good example: bandwidth consortium

supported by the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa• Satellite-based• Long commitment terms 3-5+ years• Significant costs reduction only if full transponder capacity

leased• Under $2,500/Mbps for ~100 Mbps• But needs to move to terrestrial fibre links are they get available

– Bandwidth management: filtering, use of QoS for selective bandwidth allocation, server mirroring, etc.


Bandwidth issues for African HEIs (cont’d)

– Improvement of quality of service provided in our institutions (requires both adequate infrastructure and capacity building)

– Establishment of IXPs at national and regional levels: too much international bandwidth is used for traffic that could be confined in a country, a region or the continent

• But without enabling regulatory environments and competition, little chance for a quick move to dramatic change of the situation


Established NRENs in Africa

• Active NRENs essentially established in Northern and Southern/Eastern Africa

• Well established NRENs include:– TENET (South Africa)– KENET (Kenya)– MAREN (Malawi)– EUN (Egypt)– MARWAN (Morocco)– RNU (Tunisia)– CERIST (Algeria)

• Most of other NRENs are in a more and less advanced stage of formation


Emerging NRENs in Africa

• Several initiatives in Southern, Eastern, Central and West Africa

• Most of the initiatives located in Southern/Eastern Africa (catalytic role of UbuntuNet Alliance - UA)

• Most advanced intiatives:– Eb@le (DRC) – recently joined the UA– MoRENet (Mozambique)– RENU (Uganda) – recently joined the UA– RwEdNet (Rwanda)– TENET (Tanzania) – recently joined the UA (Acronym change?)– ZamREN (Zambia) – recently joined the UA– Ethiopian REN? – also recently joined the UA– … and certainly many others to emerge within the next months


Other national initiatives

• Also quite promising initiatives in West and Central Africa– Nigeria (Process driven by Ng ICT Forum)

• Commitment of 10s of institutions in Feb 2008

– Ghana (GARNET: Ghana Academic and Research Network)• Formally launched in Nov 2006• Policy dialogue among the involved institutions very advanced

– Cameroon (RIC: Réseau Interuniversitaire du Cameroun)• Embryo already exists• New developments during the past few weeks

– Senegal (RENER:Réseau National de l’Education et de la Recherche)• Ongoing consultations among stakeholders• Meeting of VCs of involved higher education institutions for the

establishment of the Senegalese NREN scheduled this month (May 2008)

– Côte d'Ivoire • Some progress despite critical political situation


The actual picture


Regional initiatives

• First regional initiative in Africa is the EUMEDConnect project– Links Mediterranean African countries with Europe through GEANT– Direct links from individual countries to GEANT– Next phase: direct interconnection between the countries

• UbuntuNet Alliance– Alliance of several Eastern and Southern NRENs with ail to

interconnect and share bandwidth and other resources– Initially set up in order to benefit from the EASSy cable (as

shareholder)– Strong commitment of international donor community to support the

initiative– Recent important milestone: connected to GEANT in January 2008– Impressive growth that shows acceptance in the region


Key Challenges for R&E Networking in Africa

• Awareness at the highest level (Vcs, Ministers, Heads of State) on the importance of R&E Networking for African development (LEDEV and activities of other stakeholders)

• Development of clear and coherent national ICT policies taking into account both regional issues and R&E specific needs

• Regulatory environment• Power supply• Addressing the market environment disparity throughout the

continent; need for harmonization• Human capacity development


Towards an African Research and Education Network

• Despite the enormous challenges, real opportunities to move the African R&E Networking agenda forward– Awareness of the key players on the ground– Emergence of community at continental level that shares the same

vision• Begin of involvement of governments• Support from donor organizations• Support from the international REN community

• Positive signals from the private sector

• Key point : build a strong alliance with all the involved stakeholders

• AfREN: Annual meeting of the African research and education networking community– Next AfREN meeting: 31 May – 1 June 2008 in Rabat


THANK YOU !

QUESTIONS?

Boubakar Barry ([email protected])

([email protected])

Website: www.aau.org

Documents

Research and Education Networking in Africa Update from the Regions