Chris Rohrer

The Internet should be a highway road accessible to everyone- Jim Forster

African governments and IT players on the continent should aim at building and opening up e-Infrastructure and internet services so that they are affordable and easily accessible to users. Jim Forster, a former 20 year employee of the world’s leading IT and Networking company Cisco Systems and now Chairman of NetworkTheWorld, made the suggestion in …

The Internet should be a highway road accessible to everyone- Jim Forster Read More »

Register for UbuntuNet-Connect 2016

Registration for UbuntuNet-Connect 2016, the 9th annual networking conference for UbuntuNet Alliance that will be held on 3-4 November 2016 in Entebbe, Uganda, has officially opened. Interested participants are required pay a registration fee of $200 for international participants and $100 for local participants. The fee can be paid through bank transfer or on site …

Register for UbuntuNet-Connect 2016 Read More »

R&E connectivity project in Central Asia rebooted*

Over 500,000 researchers, academics and students across Central Asia stand to benefit from the launch of the 3rd phase of the EU-funded Central Asia Research and Education Network (CAREN) project which resumes regional R&E connectivity after the previous project phase ended in August 2015. The contract signing between the European Commission and GÉANT at the …

R&E connectivity project in Central Asia rebooted* Read More »

KENET boost Internet for students, making speeds 25 times faster*

Kenya Education Network (KENET) and Liquid Telecom Kenya have migrated Kenya’s education and research institutions onto connections that are up to 25 times faster than were possible in the past. The new connections are increasing the total Internet capacity distributed to KENET member institutions using Liquid Telecom Kenya’s network from as little as 200 megabytes …

KENET boost Internet for students, making speeds 25 times faster* Read More »

An NREN’s positioning vis-à-vis commercial ISPs

Inevitably the roles and activities of an NREN impact upon those of commercial service providers as participants in a competitive industry, and it is important for an NREN’s management to think about and manage the NREN’s relations with commercial ISPs. One objective is to cultivate the ISP’s understanding and respect for the NREN’s developmental role; …

An NREN’s positioning vis-à-vis commercial ISPs Read More »

Dakar Declaration on Open Access gets big boost

The Open Access global community received a major boost in May 2016 when delegates to the fourth Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Conference on Electronic Publishing adopted the ‘Dakar Declaration on Open Access Publishing in Africa and the Global South’. The Dakar Declaration calls on scholars/researchers and students, policy …

Dakar Declaration on Open Access gets big boost Read More »

66 percent of African countries have no operational NRENs – World Bank

36 of the 54 countries on the African continent do not have operational National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) representing 66 percent of countries lacking operational NRENs on the continent. This has been revealed in a recent report released by the World Bank titled the “Role and Status of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) …

66 percent of African countries have no operational NRENs – World Bank Read More »

MAREN goes eduroam

Better late than never! This seems to be a fitting phrase for the Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN) after the network successfully tested its eduroam service in June 2016 to become the fifth NREN within the UbuntuNet Alliance membership region to launch the service after KENET, TENET, ZAMREN and RENU. eduroam is a service …

MAREN goes eduroam Read More »

Connectivity boost accelerates EU-Japanese science collaborations*

Over 50 million researchers, academics and students across Europe and Japan are set to benefit from a direct 20Gbps (gigabit per second) connectivity injection into the pan-European GÉANT network, celebrated at the launch event of the upgraded Japanese Science Information Network (SINET5) in Tokyo last month. The capacity boost came in response to the increasing …

Connectivity boost accelerates EU-Japanese science collaborations* Read More »