News & Events

The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMentors joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium, at Hotel Bloom. Click here to register!

Established in 2010, the FTTH Council Africa is an independent, not for profit organisation and active member of the Fibre Council Global Alliance (FCGA) alongside the FTTH Council Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, Middle East and North Africa. 
The work of the individual FTTH Council’s is funded through member contributions, and the FCGA has more than 550 individual member companies, all equally passionate about FTTH.

UbuntuNet-Connect is the Annual Conference of UbuntuNet Alliance that focuses on research and education networking activities in Africa. It is organized by UbuntuNet Alliance and hosted by member NRENs. The Conference brings together practitioners in the research and education networking community, researchers, policy makers, academicians, connectivity providers, and a pool of expertise from across Africa and beyond. In previous years, the conference has attracted sponsorship from leading commercial companies and service providers.

The most important results that iMENTORS has achieved include:

·      A set of (collected and imported into the platform) data about more than 2.500 organizations, 250 projects, 150 networking infrastructures and 350 research infrastructures active in the e-infrastructure domain in the Sub- Saharan;

·      A useful, yet simple and applicable project evaluation and sustainability frameworks  closely interlinked with the decision support system;

·      A GIS-based powerful platform which helps to visualize different perspectives of the project findings; 

·      A community of interested participants built through a variety of dissemination activities in different countries and through collaboration with other projects.

Take a look at the map!

This is the new iMENTORS banner on the ASREN homepage:

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 Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) is the association of the Arab region National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), as well as their strategic partners, that aims to implement, manage and extend sustainable Pan-Arab e-Infrastructures dedicated for the Research and Education communities and to boost scientific research and cooperation in member countries through the provision of world-class e-infrastructures and e-services.

West-African and French Research and Education Networks, WACREN and RENATER, have announced that they have agreed to strengthen their cooperation by making RENATER an “international member” of WACREN. This strong support of WACREN is supplemented by financial support from French organisations CIRAD and IRD to accelerate the participation of WACREN in the “AfricaConnect” project funded by the European Commission.

RENATER has been partnering with WACREN since 2011, when the first cooperation agreement between WACREN and RENATER / CIRAD / IRD was signed, with the aim to provide technical, scientific and organizational expertise for the establishment of research and education networks in this region.

By signing this new agreement for financial partnership, RENATER confirms its willingness to work with the WACREN network for its interconnection in one hand, with the Eastern and Southern African networks of the UbuntuNet Alliance especially in the framework of the “AfricaConnect”, and secondly, beyond the African continent, for joining the other components of the “Global Research Village” such as GEANT in Europe.

Patrick Donath, director of RENATER, explains that “RENATER’s mission is also to help  West and Central Africa to bridge the digital divide by bringing its network expertise to promote the development of science, education and North / South cooperation within the African continent”.

Dr Boubakar Barry, CEO of WACREN, said that “this gesture of RENATER, CIRAD and IRD is much appreciated by the WACREN community. It once again demonstrates the sincerity of the cooperation with WACREN since 2011 and which has already been expressed through several joint activities. We believe that the best is yet to come, in the best interests and in the service of our communities”.

Original source: WACREN

Muscat, Oman, December 10^th – 11^th, 2014

Under the Patronage of His Highness Sayyid Taimur Bin As’ad Al Said,the Arab States Research and Education Network – ASREN, is happy to announce its fourth annual event “4^th International Platform on Integrating Arab e-Infrastructure in a Global Environment - e-AGE 2014” which will take place in 10-11 December 2014 in Muscat Oman. The platform will be hosted by The Research Council (TRC)of Oman.

The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMENTORS joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.

The AFRICA BUILD (http://africabuild.eu) is a Coordination Action aiming to support and develop advanced Centres of Excellence in health care, education and research in the African countries, through Information Technologies. This project is supported by the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-ICT). AFRICA BUILD started 1st August 2011 and will run for a period of 36 months.

UbuntuNet Alliance, the research and education network for Eastern and Southern Africa; and DANTE, the operator of GÉANT, the pan-European research and education network, today announce the commissioning of the UbuntuNet network, the regional high-speed Internet network connecting researchers, educators and students in Eastern and Southern Africa to their peers in the region and to Europe.

The African research and education community has for far too long carried the burden of slow Internet connectivity which has consequently widened the gap between the continent’s researchers and their peers globally. The establishment of national research and education networks (NRENs), the regional UbuntuNet Alliance, and the kick off of the AfricaConnect are milestones transforming the research and education landscape on the continent.

“e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future”

Oct. 29, 2014 – Hotel Bloom, Brussels

A Conference jointly organised by the eI4Africa and iMENTORS EU/FP7 projects under the aegis of the European Commission (EC, DG CONNECT) and the African Union Commission (AUC).

According to an article published on Edutech, a World Bank blog on ICT and Education, in most countries around the world, a single institution is core to the implementation of national initiatives related to the use of new technologies ('ICTs') in education. Whether we are talking about large scale rollouts of things like tablets or laptops, or educational computing efforts of the more 'traditional' variety, a single organization often serves as a focal point for many related efforts to introduce, support, maintain direct, coordinate, fund, manage and/or evaluate national efforts to utilize information and communications technologies (ICTs) in innovative -- and, if we are honest with ourselves, perhaps not so innovative -- ways in schools.

According to a blog post on the EduTech blog (World Bank), much has been made of the potential use of mobile phones to help collect, verify and disseminate information quickly, widely and cheaply in support of activities in the education sector.
 

At an event last month at the World Bank, my colleagues Sukhdeep Brar and Gaurav Relhan shared some lessons from a few recent and on-going education activities in Uganda, providing some potentially quite useful insights for those seeking answers this question. The full video for this event, as well as the PowerPoint file presented, is available online. For those of you who are pressed for time, or are just not sure if clicking those links is worth the effort, here is a quick synopsis of what was shared and discussed.

Image courtesy of nokhoog_buchachon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The 4th eI4Africa Thematic Workshop is taking place on June 3rd, 2014, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania at the Peacock City Center. This thematic workshop is organised by DIT with the support of Sigma Orionis and all eI4Africa project partners. The workshop is co-hosted by the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) and the Tanzania Research and Education Network (TERNET). It is en event organised under the aegis of the European Commission (EC, DG CONNECT) and in co-location with the Technology Transfer Alliance (TTA) Conference 2014.

On VENTURES AFRICA, a Kenyan financier talks about opportunity and investment in the business of education.

The first thing a visitor to the Fanisi Capital boardroom notices when he walks in is a big black television and, below the television, a picture. It is an interesting one to look at: the people in it – students and teachers, presumably – are of every race, skin and hair colour, all smiling. The lawn in the foreground is lush and well manicured. Palm trees rise above the smiling faces, flanking seven thatched roof peaks. It could be a picture of a “Young United Nations” conference on a tropical island. The only thing that shows it is not the UN is a school crest. Hillcrest Investments Limited (HIL) currently owns the school in the photo, as well as its sister schools on the same campus.

Image courtesy of africa / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

More than ever before, Africans are turning to ICT-supported learning to grow their economies. In 2013, the eLearning Africa Report found that 40% of African technology-assisted learning professionals were using ICTs specifically for skills training, up from 18% the previous year.

Photographs Denize Nasilowski © ICWE GmbH

The benefit of ICT-supported learning is that it allows employers to provide vocational training to a great number of workers for little cost. This year’s eLearning Africa, 28th – 30th May in Kampala, Uganda, will explore how technology  is revolutionising  learning and training across the continent, under the theme “Opening Frontiers to the Future”.

UbuntuNet-Connect 2014, Lusaka, Zambia

 The CHAIN-REDS Project is organising a workshop on "e-Infrastructures for Education, Research and Development" in Tunis, Tunisia on December 11, 2013, presenting project outcomes and focusing on initiatives and developments in the Arab region. The event is organised under the aegis of the European Commission and in co-location with the e-AGE 2013 conference "Connect, Access, Innovate", that will be held in Tunis, Tunisia on December 12-13, 2013.

According to an article published on Ventureburn, during a panel discussion at the African Entrepreneurship Summit 2013 (#africasummit) in Mauritius, there was an interesting debate between IKED and Intentac’s Thomas Andersson and the government of India’s Harkesh Mittal about the role of universities and the government in nurturing entrepreneurship.

The eastern and southern Africa region waited long for the deployment of the reliable regional data communication e-infrastructure that is now coming online through AfricaConnect and the expansion of the UbuntuNet network.  With burgeoning youthful population and low access rates to higher education in eastern and southern Africa, the potential for improvements in education delivery through creative use of new information technology resources is endless. In addition, the network presents many possibilities in research, including enabling regional and global collaboration  for researchers in addressing issues of national and regional significance. In both, NRENs are perceived as key players nationally. The annual UbuntuNet-Connect conference provides the appropriate forum to showcase progress in research and education networking in Africa.