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June 2011

National Research and Education Networks

How Can Research and Education Networks Increase African Educational Development?

. Research and Education Networks (RENs), at both the national and regional level, have been in existence for a long time in most parts of the world. They are normally driven by universities and research institutions, providing dedicated high speed networks that enable access to online resources for students and researchers; support content-level collaboration in […]

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The Role of NRENs in National Development

. National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) are gaining clout in Africa. At the last count, UbuntuNet reports 13 NREN members and 6 NRENs in development in East and Southern Africa, while WACREN reports 2 NREN members and 9 NRENs in development. UbuntuNet and WACREN are regional RENs for their respective regions. This modest success […]

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NREN Impact: Reflections based on the INTERNET2 experience

Internet2 (USA) shares a key characteristic with other National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and that is provision of connectivity to multiple universities. However, Internet2 is organized as not-for-profit whereas some NRENS are government/ministry based. Internet2 takes pride in being community led and member focused. Internet2’s core mission is “to ensure that scholars and researchers […]

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African NRENs can expand educational opportunities across education sectors

Over the past three decades, the revolution in computers and telecommunications networks has created unprecedented changes in business, commerce, government, science, health care, and education. New jobs, new industries, an explosion in entrepreneurship, new modes of community building, increased learning opportunities, ease of access to timely information and global markets, and the ability of an […]

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NREN Opportunities and Challenges: the Xnet Development Alliance Trust experience

Being the last entrant into the UbuntuNet Alliances National Research and Education Network (NREN) arena, I’d like to share some of our experiences to date. As we are still finding our feet, my discussion will feature mainly on opportunities and challenges encountered to date as well as recommendations. The Xnet Development Alliance Trust was established […]

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The State of Research and Education Networking in Africa

Research and education networks (RENs) are dedicated networks for the research and education community. Unlike the “general” Internet, often referred to as commodity Internet, they carry only data related to education and research. RENs were first established more than 20 years ago in developed countries in Europe and the Americas to support bandwidth-intensive applications in […]

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InfoDev UNESCO

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