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Research and education networks (RENs) are dedicated networks for the research and education community. Unlike the \u201cgeneral\u201d Internet, often referred to as commodity Internet, they carry only data related to education and research.<\/p>\n
RENs were first established more than 20 years ago in developed countries in Europe and the Americas to support bandwidth-intensive applications in research, when it became evident that using the commodity Internet on demand for these applications, and for moving large quantities of data between institutions within a country, between countries, and between continents was not feasible. An example is the transport of data from CERN\u2019s Large Hadron Collider<\/a> to various research centers worldwide.<\/p>\n RENs have also been places of innovation in networking technologies and have substantially fostered scientific collaboration at national, regional and international levels.<\/p>\n Why are research and education networks crucial for Africa?<\/b><\/p>\n RENs have a huge potential for improving the quality of education and research. The gain in productivity through access to high-speed networks for teaching, learning and research activities is obvious. For Africa, access to such networks through RENs is even more important for various reasons:<\/p>\n The state of research and education networks in Africa<\/b><\/p>\n The first African RENs emerged in the early 2000s. Today, NRENs exist in all parts of Africa, with of course various levels of development. The existing NRENs can be categorized into the following groups:<\/p>\n Beside the establishment of NRENs, efforts have also been put into forming regional RENs. To-date, there are 3 RENs that can be considered as RRENs in Africa:<\/p>\n UbuntuNet Alliance<\/a>:<\/a> this is the first RREN that was established in Africa; from its initial founding members in November 2005, it has grown up to 13 member NRENs. It\u2019s membership area is Eastern and Southern Africa;<\/p>\n WACREN<\/a>:<\/a> the West and Central African Research and Education Network was established in August 2010, but efforts to have it established go as far back as 2006; its membership potential (West and Central Africa) is 22 NRENs, although only 2 NRENs have been formally established in this area;<\/p>\n ASREN<\/a>:<\/a> the Arab States Research and Education Network was formally launched in December 2010. Although it embraces countries outside Africa, it is considered as one of the African RRENs. ASREN can be considered as an extension of the EUMedConnect Project<\/a> network, an initiative funded by the European Union that connected Mediterranean countries to the pan-European network GEANT<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lessons learned in the establishment of RENs in Africa<\/b><\/p>\n The REN Unit of the Association of African Universities<\/a> has been involved in most of the initiatives that have been described above by providing support for the policy development processes at national or regional level, by providing support at the policy level, by facilitating the dialogue among stakeholders and through capacity building.<\/p>\n Many lessons have been learned in the various processes, among which the following are highlighted:<\/p>\n Establishing a research and education network (either national or regional) is about putting resources together in order to get more value for money and foster collaboration. Thus, trust matters a lot. Building trust among the stakeholders is key, not the needed resources. If resources are available and trust doesn\u2019t exist among the stakeholders, the initiative won\u2019t last long. One can say that 80% of the efforts have to be put into social engineering; it\u2019s the key for success;<\/p>\n Not all potential members of an NREN or RREN will be ready to join at the same time. There are different reasons for that: lack of awareness, lack of adequate infrastructure (no campus network for example), lack of trust, etc. It\u2019s important to start with those who are ready, but leave the door open for other to join later without discrimination, as and when they feel they are ready to do so. So, the motto should be: \u201cstart small, be open and scale up\u201d; <\/p>\n Champions should be identified and supported: research and education networking is new, or even unknown to most of African higher education leaders. It is therefore important to support champions who understand the issues at stake, through provision of awareness raising material, capacity building, etc.;<\/p>\n End-users (researchers, teachers, students, and administration workers) should be involved in the early stage of the REN establishment process. Not only because they can constitute an important pressure community to move the REN agenda forward, but mainly because they must understand the advantage of RENs and be part of the driving force;<\/p>\n Inadequate telecommunication regulation can be a big barrier to the establishment of NRENs, and can even jeopardize the establishment of RRENs. It is therefore important to approach telecommunication regulatory authorities and establish strategic partnerships with them; experiences in West Africa have proven that this can help in removing barriers;<\/p>\n Government involvement: in Africa, RENs can hardly be sustained at the outset if not supported in any manner by government. Having the backing of government, especially the ministries in charge of higher education, research and telecommunications is crucial. Such support does need to translate, in the first instance, to financial support: the recognition of the importance of the establishment of RENs can in itself open many doors. There is enough evidence of this: the World Bank support to the governments of Kenya, Mozambique and Senegal (to name a few) for the support to the establishment\/strengthening of the NRENs in these countries; the decision of the Agence de l\u2019Informatique de l\u2019Etat of Senegal<\/a> and the National Information Technology Agency of Ghana<\/a>, both managing government networks, to allocate capacity for the interconnection of universities in these two countries, are examples that could and will certainly will be emulated.<\/p>\n Best practices<\/b><\/p>\n Best practices are important to share among communities. In the field of research and education networking, the following practices (to name just a few) have proved to be strong factors for fostering the establishment of RENs:<\/p>\n Challenges and opportunities<\/b><\/p>\n The challenges for the establishment of RENs in Africa are well known, and won\u2019t be developed here, but just to enumerate a few: <\/p>\n However, there are many opportunities:<\/p>\n What can the various stakeholders do?<\/b><\/p>\n Universities\/Research centers:<\/u> appoint full time campus network managers; allocate budget for running\/expanding state of the art campus networks;<\/p>\n Governments and other political bodies:<\/u> allocate capacity for universities\/research centers interconnection on government backbones, where available; set establishment\/strengthening of research and education networks as tool for the development of education and research and for social development as a priority when negotiating with development partners;<\/p>\n Development partners:<\/u> recognize and support research and education research networks as essential tool for improving education and research and for promoting international collaboration and socio-economic development.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/b><\/p>\n Research and Education Networks are being setting up throughout Africa. Despite the challenges champions are been facing these last years, there are clear signals that the main actors (higher education and research institutions, policy and decision makers, the private sector, especially telecom operators) have become more aware of the importance of RENs for African development. The global bandwidth to sub-Saharan African universities has gone up from less than 1Gbps three years to over 12Gbps now. <\/p>\n With the start of the implementation of AfricaConnect, a truly regional network will start rolling out. It is certain that African universities and research institutions will soon connect regionally and globally at a level that has never been experienced before, for the good of collaboration between Africa and the rest of the world and for the good of humanity and development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Research and education networks (RENs) are dedicated networks for the research and education community. Unlike the \u201cgeneral\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[902],"tags":[943,675,944,933,942,947,911,948,945,904,903,946,931,905,949,906,907],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2709,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947\/revisions\/2709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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