The West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) led the way for this year’ regional networking conferences when it held its sixth annual networking conference, WACREN 2021 virtually from 15-19 March 2021.
The conference was held under the patronage of the African Union Commission (AUC) Commissioner for Human Resource Science and Technology, Her Excellency Prof. Sarah Anyang-Agbor who emphasized during her keynote speech that the AUC recognizes the importance of digital transformation in development in line with the conference theme.
Participants from the global research and education community attended the online event was co-located with other events including the NREN Communication workshop hold on 15 March 2021.
Taking stock of the gathering, WACREN CEO Dr. Boubakar Barry highlighted that the conference had achieved its intended goal of stirring insightful conversations, inspiring useful and actionable ideas to advance research and education in the WACREN region.
The WACREN conference precedes the three annual conferences of the other Regional Research and Education Networks of GEANT, UbuntuNet Alliance and GEANT who are the implementing partners of the European Commission co-funded AfricaConnect3 project.
GEANTs holds its annual conference in June every year while UbuntuNet Alliance organizes its networking gathering in November and ASREN holds its e-AGE conference in December.