Session Chair: Prof Shedden Masupe, BotsREN

1. Keynote – “Unlocking science through research assessment reform.” Dr. GLINOS, Kostas, Independent expert in Science, Technology and Innovation
   

   Dr Kostas Glinos is an independent expert in Science, Technology and Innovation policy. He has worked at the European Commission for 30 years, where he held management positions in the areas of Open Science, international R&D cooperation, research infrastructures, e-infrastructures, cyber-physical systems, future and emerging technologies and big research data. He has also developed and managed R&D funding programmes in several research domains. In 2017-2018 he was a Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Before joining the Commission Kostas worked in the chemical industry in the USA and Belgium, lectured at the University and carried out research. He holds a PhD in engineering from the University of Massachusetts and an Advanced Professional Certificate in investment management from Drexel University.

2. Panel Discussion – Towards Open Access and Open Science: The role of Botswana Library and Information Centres in BotsREN. Panelists – Dr LEBELE, Ayanda (Botswana International University of Science and Technology), Dr ALPHEGE, Maisiri (University of Botswana),  MAPHAKWANE, Naniki (Botswana Open University), Prof. NTOKWANE, Poloko (Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis), RADIJENG, Kgomotso (BITRI), SEANEGO, Jan (Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources). Moderator: Prof. MOAHI, Kgomotso (Botswana Open University)Botswana public universities and research institutions have recently formed a research network known as Botswana Research Education Networks (BotsREN). Research and education networks require that libraries, information and knowledge centres must be critical partners. In Botswana, most of the centres have evolved into digital libraries and information centres. Such a move opens new opportunities especially in the support and advancement of Open Science through Open Access, Open Education, FAIR and Open Data. It goes without saying that digital libraries are central in the lifecycle of research with tenets of findability, preservation, interlinking, and re-use of research products and promotion of scholarly communication process. An interconnected, highly collaborative digital library system is therefore called for. It is from the foregoing that panel discussion shall focuses on the role of BotsREN libraries and information centres in fostering open science, open access, and playing a critical role in the creation, management, discovery and reuse of scholarship. The discussion shall  provide a platform to dialogue on how Botswana Higher Education Institutions’ and research institutions’ libraries and information centres will contribute meaningfully to the (BotsREN) agenda.

Session Chair: Dr. Gregoire Njejimana

1. Seismic shifts in the LIS infosphere: Futurising African libraries in the era of constant change – COLLENCE, T. Chisita
   The library and Information Science (LIS) infosphere remain constant amidst the rapid technological changes that continue to shape the future of the industry. The infosphere refers to the dynamic environment in which people live including the sphere of human activity encapsulating the collection and processing of information, especially by computer. The yesteryear models seem to be losing ground due to the unprecedented technological developments, dynamic needs of diverse users, growing volumes of information being produced and proliferation of digital technologies for generating, processing and disseminating information. It is against this background that this chapter seeks to explore how digital technologies will determine the future of libraries. The chapter focuses on academic libraries from a selected developing country with regards to how they are adjusting to the technological changes in the LIS infosphere. It also seeks to find out the strategies they have adapted to remain relevant in an era of constant change and how they respond to the demands of putting people first. Using an interpretivist, the chapter will analyse the challenges and opportunities for academic libraries and librarians in an era of constant change. It will also explore the strategies in place to futurise the academic library from a developing country’s perspective.
2. Digital Literacy of Students, Library Staff and Faculty in Universities in Uganda and Nigeria: A Comparative Survey – A. OYELUDE, Adetoun (University of Ibadan, NIGERIA); AKULLO, Winny Nekesa (Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority, UGANDA)
   

   The introduction of new technologies has had a significant influence on teaching, learning, and research activities in universities. University libraries, as a result, have opportunities to provide information resources in a variety of formats. This study will investigate the digital literacy of students, library staff, and faculty in universities in Uganda and Nigeria comparatively. It specifically targets third-year and postgraduate students, library staff, not on ICT schedules, and faculty in non-ICT-related faculties in the universities. Awareness, usage, training, and access were explored. A survey method was employed and a structured questionnaire was utilized to solicit data. The study population will comprise students, library staff and faculty of universities in Uganda and Nigeria. The results will be analyzed using frequency mean and tables. Findings from the study will be presented, comparing the universities in the two countries. Recommendations will be made on the way forward for students, staff, and faculty of university libraries to further enhance their digital literacy skills for teaching, learning, and research.

3. Digital resources awareness among students at National Institute of Public Administration in Lusaka – CHEMBE, Kaluba, NYIRENDA, Wezi, and PHIRI, Enos (National Institute of Public Administration, ZAMBIA)
   The current study focused on establishing digital resources awareness among students at National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA) in Lusaka. Digital resources have been viewed to be flexible, because students can interact with resources they sought to consult. Learners in higher education might access digital resources from anywhere and anytime, especially with the availability of the Internet and other necessary technologies. However, there is scanty information about NIPA students accessing and utilizing digital resources. It is from that background that a study was conducted to determine the availability of these resources and how accessible they are to NIPA students. The specific objectives of the study were to: establish the accessibility of digital resources to students at NIPA in Lusaka; determine utilization of digital resources by students at NIPA in Lusaka; and lastly, to ascertain challenges faced by students at NIPA in accessing digital resources.

   This study used both qualitative and quantitative designs. The target population for this study were undergraduate students from NIPA. 367 was the sample size out of a population of 4300. However, only 239 respondents were able to respond to the questionnaire which had open and closed ended questions. This study collected qualitative and quantitative data from all the respondents. This study also utilized both primary and secondary data. Quantitative data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel while, content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data. The findings revealed 91.9% expressed knowledge of availability of digital resources; 2.1% indicated that digital resources were not available; and 5.9% did know of their availability. The current research also revealed that 90% utilized digital resources, 7.9% did not use digital resources; and 2.1% showed no knowledge of utilization. Therefore, it was concluded that the majority of NIPA students had access and utilized digital resource to their disposal. However, this study also found that students faced many challenges in accessing digital resources. 76% faced challenges in accessing digital resources compared to 23.7% who did not. The major challenge faced was interruption of electrical power supply.

4. Open Educational Resources as the Panacea for Decolonisation of e-Learning Content. MNCUBE, Siphamandla, (University of South Africa, SOUTH AFRICA) 
   Globally, higher education institutions are advocating open educational resources (OER) for tuition and learning. South African and other African institutions realised the need for the adoption and development of OER to be appropriated in digital learning. However, there is an emerging need for decolonisation in different aspects including educational content. Yet, there is a lack of knowledge and theories concerning the decolonisation of e-learning content. This study sought to establish possibilities of decolonisation of e-learning content using OER. The study found that open distance e-learning institution advocates for OER. However, there is still a lack of strategies, policies, and practical guides for the decolonisation of e-learning content using OER. Therefore, the study proposed a decolonisation of the e-learning content model to be used by academia in the African context to progress the decolonisation of e-learning content. 

Session Chair: Dr Nokuthula Mchunu, Africa Open Science Platform

1. Academic Librarian Skill Sets in a Digitalized Learning Environment – NCHEMBA, Pauline (Levy Mwanawasa Medical University, ZAMBIA)
   The digitalization process has brought about a paradigm shift to the research and education community across the globe. As African colleges and universities move to next level to create, new and innovative processes and capabilities based on current and emerging digital technologies, libraries are not spared. They too have to be digitalized. This move has implications on the librarians whose working environment and roles changes as new learning environments are created. This has posed challenges on academic librarians as they now need to develop new skills if they are to remain relevant and contribute positively in an environment where information accessing and curation activities for students and lecturers move into the digital space and with a much greater need for the librarians to understand how knowledge and knowledge pathways are being reshaped by a new and fast growing digital learning environment. Presented in the paper will be the key professional, technical and soft skills academic librarians should possess in order to implement creative, adaptive, proactive and innovative changes in the provision of information to support research and education. The paper will highlights the changing digital learning environment, how it has changed the functions of a library and the roles of librarians, the skills that librarians should possess in a digital learning environment, how librarians acquire these skills, challenges that are faced when acquiring these skills and when working in a digital library and a discussion on strategies to deal with the challenges.
2. Digitization of academic, financial and administrative management of the Bujumbura Light University – RUTOMERA, Pierre Claver, HAMIM, Hamisi, and MIRINDI, Marcellin (Universite Lumiere de Bujumbura, BURUNDI)
   The management of student flows, their mobility between the various campuses/ academic institutions and the monitoring of student education pathways were some of the major challenges faced by the academic authorities as well as the ministry in charge of education. This was mainly due to the number of students and higher education institutions, which was growing rapidly, as well as the lack of adequate IT tools. A survey showed that the number of students in Burundi increased by 68.9% between 2013 and 2021 academic years while the number of public and private higher education institutions increased by 71.05% over the same period. However, until 2015, the use of IT tools in teaching/learning and in the management of academic activities still had a small place in Burundi. In 2014, one of the main recommendations of an analysis made on the state of the management of academic activities at our University was to gradually integrate the use of IT tools in teaching/learning and in administration to improving the management of academic activities; the data collection, access and sharing of the information. Since 2015, a team of three staff members has been charged to elaborate and to implement an IT software based on the recommendations of the analysis. The software named EDUSYS (education management system) has been written using open sources and has been deployed in 2018. EDUSYS is an online platform accessible 24/7 that allows all registered users to access different services depending on the category and access rights of each user.

   EDUSYS has six main sections. (1)The dashboard section displays the summary of statistical data of the University in the form of numbers, graphs and tables. The data in tables are exportable to pdf or excel format for further analysis. (2)The messaging module allows users to manage communication between students, teachers and staff members through mails and chats. (3)The academic services section contains the database of all students enrolled in an academic year, teachers and all undergraduate and postgraduate programs offered by the University as well as the results of all course evaluations. Students looking for their academic documents, and teachers submitting their online payment requests go through this same section. (4)The finance section deals with tuition fees and the payment of part-time teachers. (5)Configuration remains a section reserved for the platform’s Administration while (6)My EDUSYS is a section containing the profile data for each user registered in the database. Online registration application for new students is available on the homepage of EDUSYS before logging in. EDUSYS also contains advanced filters in the various sections mentioned above helping to generate automatic lists that can be exported to Excel and pdf formats. A biometric student card linked to EDUSYS has been distributed to students. This card interacts with several communication terminals thanks to the Near Field Communication (NFC) function. A mobile app allows students to better interact with the EDUSYS server.

   The implementation of EDUSYS has enabled effective monitoring of the academic pathways of students during their studies, and easy access to the various services for all users. With EDUSYS, it has been much easier to control in real time, the number of enrolled students and to provide a better solution to the problem of managing tuition fees or paying honorariums for part-time teachers. Unforgeable academic documents are automatically printed from the database. Moreover, EDUSYS has been a good support tool providing reliable statistical data to the decision makers in real time. The digitization project at our University has been a success and today some higher education institutions are requesting to provide them with the software.

3. Institutional Repositories as a Continuum in Scholarly Communication for Policy Decision Making Process – CHILONGA, Mpundu (Kwame Nkrumah University, ZAMBIA)

   This study was undertaken to uncover the role institutional repositories in Policy and Decision-Making processes. The study undertook that the academic research produced institutions of higher learning, and archived on functional institutional repositories can play a significant role to enhance decision making, institutional direction and generally, the policy making processes in government ministries in Africa. It is an established fact that information is an important resource in decision-making. Organised and managed digital content of information in research repositories, generated by faculty, staff and students, provide an essential infrastructure, and are a missing link in digital research communication, that enhances the dissemination of intellectual output of an institution, to the bodies concerned in the governance structure.

   The study established that; research sharing in universities and other institutions of learning have a role to play in policy implementation and institutional direction in government. It has been established that there was need to change the policy-makers’ perception of academic research and be able to understand the extent to which the social, political and economic environment can be influenced by the use of academic research. This would entail the establishment of mechanism to enhance access to academic research by the government ministries in the quest to enhance its utilisation.

4. Digitization of a defense force training institution, Lessons learnt. The Case of Zambia Air Force Centre of Advanced Learning (ZAF CAL) – Dr CHAAMWE, Nchimunya (Copperbelt University, ZAMBIA) and SHABALENGU, Evans (Zambia Airforce Centre of Advanced Learning)
   Advancements in ICTs have revolutionized the education system worldwide. The traditional or conventional teaching-learning approaches have given way to more modern, flexible and responsive approaches that make use of these ICTs. It is widely accepted that any organization or institution, either public or government needs to migrate to a digital way of doing things for it to achieve its business objectives and learning institutions are no exception. Learning institutions run by defense forces in Zambia have not remained behind and have joined this bandwagon of digitization. Zambia Airforce Centre of Advanced Learning, for example has in the recent past introduced eLearning platforms and in addition have modified traditional four walled classrooms in order for the school to offer real time online and offline content to students pursuing programs offered by the center. The school was established to advance careers of the ZAF personnel in order to keep them in their various professions to the fore and high on the Zambia Air Force Mission and Vision. In order to achieve its goal of achieving learning for efficiency, ZAF CAL has entered into partnerships with CBU, UNZA and NIPA. These partnerships are intended to produce graduates who will be able to compete with other graduates in similar fields at an international level. This paper highlights the digitalization process at the center. The paper dives into the center and covers the challenges and hurdles that were faced in the digitization process and also highlights the successes that were recorded. The paper further highlights the levels of digital adoption by staff teaching at the center.

Session Chair: Miriam Chahuruva, ZimREN

1. Roaming Anytime Anywhere – MUHUMUZA, Fahadi and NAKAWUNGU, Hellen  (RENU, UGANDA)
   

   eduroam (education roaming) is a global Wi-Fi internet access roaming service designed specifically for users in the research and education communities. It provides secure and trusted network access to researchers, lecturers, teachers, and students who are roaming across eduroam-enabled institutions. Traditionally access to eduroam was within the institutions’ boundaries (campus eduroam), a challenge that was addressed through Metro eduroam deployment in Uganda. Metro eduroam proved to be very useful and successful in allowing students to continue using eduroam off-campus wherever there is an eduroam hotspot. Despite the fact that Metro eduroam made life easier for students and researchers, particularly during the COVID-19 lockdown, access points broadcasting eduroam are still only available in metro areas and in specific locations.

   This creates many gaps in connecting the research and education community to a trusted network, particularly in non-urban areas, and users in urban areas must travel to specific access locations to use eduroam. The introduction of the eduroam on the Go service filled several gaps in the Metro eduroam service. With additional benefits such as expanding eduroam coverage beyond institutions and urban areas, as well as service mobility at any time. The R&E community no longer needs to be in a specific access area; instead, they can remain connected to the secure and trusted network while on the move.

2. Supporting the Creation of New Identity Federations in Africa – MWOTIL, Alex (UbuntuNet Alliance of Research and Education Networks, MALAWI) and REALE, Mario (GEANT, NETHERLANDS)
   Over the past year, UbuntuNet Alliance (UA), Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN), West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) under the three regional clusters of the AfricaConnect3 project, with facilitation from GÉANT, have been engaged in supporting establishment of new national identity federations in Africa. At the onset, the activity was mainly to address key issues in setting up and operationalizing new identity federations that include lack of technical competence on deployment of required components; lack of expertise to define policy components and governance models related to management of the federation; and information exchange gaps on federation best practices at the continental level. Through this collaboration, five new identity federations have been created with varying setup levels towards admission to the inter-federation service eduGAIN.

   This presentation will provide a field experience overview of spawning new identity federations in Africa with an aim to highlight the key barriers in setting them up, operationalization and uptake of federated identity management services. Additionally, the presentation will provide an update on the project’s activities on the identity federation setup dimension that include comprehensive training on Federated Identity Management, Identity Federations tools and procedures, including a hands-on component for participants from three regional clusters in Africa. The outcomes of the training activities and an overview of the eduID.Africa as an African catch-all federation will also be presented. The final part of the presentation will highlight the possible developments which could positively impact and ease the entire process and boost the adoption of Federated Identity Management and Identity Federations in Africa, for the benefit of Research and Higher education in the continent, mentioning key use cases which could benefit by the growth of federations in Africa. The two main topics that will be presented are technological developments supporting service deployment and operation; and existing or new use cases and applications able to attract new users and services.

3. Using Managed IdP to Connect Small Institutions to Eduroam – NAKAKEETO, Claire and KAWUMA, Daniel (RENU, UGANDA)
   Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, academic institutions were temporarily closed as a measure to reduce the spread of the virus. As a result, in a bid to continue tutoring their respective learners,  online learning was adopted by a plethora of institutions. The core challenge that arose from the advent of online tutoring was the high cost of the internet incurred by the  students and researchers when accessing the online resources. As a result, RENU quickly came in and introduced a myriad of solutions to combat the problem, the most prominent being; Metro eduroam (off-campus eduroam) which was intended to enable the NREN community access eduroam beyond institutional boundaries.  Unfortunately, not all institutions (especially schools and small research institutions) had the budget to meet the requirements needed to setup eduroam, that’s a RADIUS server for managing authentications, a user database for managing user accounts plus the technical manpower needed to setup and manage the aforementioned servers. This was a big stumbling block that hindered small institutions from accessing and using the eduroam service. It’s no surprise that the uptake of eduroam in many institutions, especially schools had been low over the years since the inception of the service.

   It was for such institutions that the managed IdP service was invented. With the managed IdP service, small institutions within the RENU community can now join the eduroam community and utilize the service without worrying about the technical requirements. The managed IdP service is set up in a way that RENU handles all the technical load on behalf of the RENU community, and all the member institutions do is create eduroam accounts with the click of a button. This solution has brought a rapid increase in the uptake of the service. Before the inception of the service, only 12.4% of the RENU institutions had joined eduroam. At the time of writing this abstract, about 8% of the current RENU institutions have joined the eduroam community and are enjoying the

   benefits of eduroam through the managed IdP service, and 8% more institutions are in the pipeline yet to be onboarded to the managed IdP service. This has consequently resulted in an increase in the amount of eduroam traffic on the RENU network. The overall goal of the presentation is to share with the African NREN Community the managed IdP architecture used, the challenges faced, the benefits of the rollout and the traffic patterns.

4. Building and managing academic research computing infrastructure for universities in East and West Africa – MOYER, Brian, SSENTONGO, Lloyd, WHALEN, Christopher, ECONOMOU, Matthew (Research Data and Communication Technologies, UGANDA) and TARTAKOVSKY, Michael (National Institute of Allegy and Infectious Diseases, UNITED STATES)
   Scientific computing infrastructure (cyber infrastructure) are a fundamental resource for research and educational institutions of higher learning. This consists of computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments and data repositories, visualization environments, and people, all linked together by software and high-performance networks to improve research productivity and enable breakthroughs not otherwise possible. However, these infrastructures cannot be self sustained. Thus, in high-income countries, scientific cyber infrastructure are directly funded by governments . Several examples include the European Open Science Grid, the US Advanced Cyber infrastructure Coordination Ecosystem Services & Support (ACCESS), and Japan’s High performance Computing Infrastructure. The maintenance of these infrastructure represents an enormous challenge for low to middle income countries. Indeed, the demands for computing and data storage will always be greater than that which can be provided by direct or even indirect funding for research grants. Therefore, African low-income countries face a dramatic challenge in providing their researchers and students, with access to low-cost cyber infrastructure. RDCT Uganda is an African and US owned company that works with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to build two centers of excellence for bioinformatics and data intensive science in Mali and Uganda (ACE). These two centers at the University of Science and Technology in Bamako and Makerere University in Kampala rely on donated infrastructure and services from the NIAID and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded centers such as the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the Open Science Grid, as well as corporate donations and the National Research and Education Network community like RENU to deliver cyber infrastructure to faculty and students in both West and East/Central Africa.

   This presentation will discuss the experiences of our system administrators in delivering cyber-infrastructure services to the research community and the challenges that they have faced as well as the specific solutions they have developed and implemented. Some of these challenges include electrical costs, electrical stability, internet bandwidth/reliability, the training and development of knowledgeable staff to support the infrastructure, business continuity, monitoring, and management of the systems. Some of the topics we will discuss include immersion cooling, working with in-kind donors, geothermal cooling, and supporting three dimensional modeling technologies. Commercial cloud computing, while having reliability and cutting-edge capabilities, requires funding solutions that have so far proven incompatible with the African academic institutions for faculty, research, and teaching. High performance and high throughput computing is critical to all areas of scientific inquiry and it is a fundamental requirement for the African academic community to have access to infrastructure that meets their needs and their funding models.

Panel Session: Digital Research Technologies – Panelists: Dr SANSA-OTIM, Julianne, Dr NAKATUMBA-NABENDE, Joyce (Makerere University, UGANDA), NGABO, Desire (University of Rwanda, RWANDA), MBONIMPA, Nicholas (RENU, UGANDA), Dr NSABAGWA, Mary (Makerere University, UGANDA), BALAKRICHENAN, Sandoche (Afnic, FRANCE)

Data collection and processing are two important steps in the research process. In recent years data collection through the use of sensors has increased due to advances and lowering costs of sensor technology. Sensors are capable of collecting different types of data e.g. images, video, sound, motion, etc. Sensors enable the convenient collection of data from various sites simultaneously. Some of the most remote sites actually form the most interesting research sites yet are often left out of research studies as they are a great inconvenience. Sensors make it attainable to include such sites in research studies. If the setup also automates the transmission of the collected data from the sensors to a remote server then real time analytics are possible. LoRaWAN is a promising technology to allow low-cost last mile connectivity for sensors and internet of things (IoT) deployments into the NRENs.

IoT technologies currently operate as independent silos, and roaming is possible only if there are prior interconnection agreements. To our knowledge, there are no standardised procedures for interconnecting different IoT networks for roaming. IoTRoam has been set up as an operational roaming model that scales, seamlessly embedded to existing IoT infrastructures and interconnects on a global basis with minimum initial configuration requirement. As a Proof-of-Concept, Afnic have designed, implemented and tested (with Universities in France) a roaming LoRaWAN architecture using time-tested infrastructures in the Internet such as PKI (Public Key Infrastracture) and DNS. The IoTRoam experience has helped Afnic propose changes to the LoRaWAN Backend Interface Specification that have been accepted. They have also evaluated whether the proposed mechanisms satisfy constrained IoT requirements.

NRENs such as RENU, in collaboration with researchers, are now deploying LoRaWAN gateways to support this research need. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning research require high-speed data processing and computation of large data sets involved. Commercial cloud services such as the Amazon web services (AWS) and Google Cloud have setups that meet this requirement excellently. The challenge, however, is the unsustainable monthly cost. Fortunately, NRENs such as RENU are beginning to provision cloud services that meet such needs.

The WIMEA lab setup typical data gathering sensors in field sites. Each site is a weather station designed with the objective of increasing the life of the sensor nodes. This is because these stations are deployed in remote off-grid locations powered by energy harvesting technologies. Furthermore, these locations are limited in the network connectivity options. Cellular connectivity is the most widely distributed and was adopted. Challenges experienced included: accessing SIM cards due to sim card registration requirements, sustaining the data costs beyond the project period and blockage of sim cards due to repeated sim activations. The WIMEA-ICT team collaborated with RENU in the deployment of the first LoRaWAN gateway for sustainable data transmission. Since the LoRaWAN radio frequency is a free license, there are no operational costs. The stations that are within the range of two existing LoRaWAN gateways have now moved over this transmission option, with anticipation of more gateways country-wide. Recent studies in Rwanda have also embraced the LoRaWAN technology with applications in bee monitoring and air quality monitoring. LoRaWAN networks with wide coverage are now needed to sustainably support transmissions from increasing IoT installations.  Secondly the data presents new research challenges in terms of ensuring that despite the high data volumes, this data is transmitted to the remote servers for processing.

Researchers utilise commercial cloud service providers like AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to access high-performance infrastructure for cloud computing, data analytics & machine learning. This is through the provision of virtual machines that are elastic in nature and can be used for cloud storage and compute. When one creates a Google Cloud or AWS project, Google/AWS sets limits to the resources available for use. In some cases, the limits are insufficient for model training and for one to fully utilise these available compute, there is a need for them to request to have the cloud resources increased which is expensive. NRENs have a mandate to provide connectivity and other value-added services e.g. cloud services. Uganda’s NREN, RENU has since 2017 offered a cloud service to its members, which is mostly used for data storage. To support high-speed AI processing within the RENU cloud, efforts are being undertaken to acquire more GPU cores. The challenges include technical skills required to provision a high-performance cloud, pricing models for this new product and procurement delays. The main opportunities are the provision of a more affordable cloud storage and compute infrastructure that is closer to the researchers allowing them to have sufficient compute space for large datasets and efficient data processing closer to the point where it is created. The research community in Africa needs both LoRaWAN technology and High-performance clouds. This can readily be met by the NRENs since currently researchers use more expensive and sometimes less reliable options and if the NRENs carefully design cost-effective services, these will properly contribute to the much needed “beyond connectivity” NREN aspiration.

Session Chair: Prof Madara Ogot, UbuntuNet Alliance

• Keynote 1: NREN Maturity Models – JAUME-RAJAONIA, Sabine, International and Strategy Director, RENATER, FRANCE
  

  Sabine JAUME is International and Strategy Director  of RENATER, the French NREN. She joined the NREN community over 25 years ago. Sabine contributed to the early stages of the pan-European network GÉANT at project governance level. Committed to this R&E community, she has served as GÉANT board member and is involved in strategic committees. Convinced that NRENs are essential for R&E users which are at the heart of a fascinating digital transformation, Sabine is also driving RENATER’s collaborations with African partners. Indeed, it’s key for the future to all join forces, to ensure end-to-end secured connectivity to R&E users everywhere on the globe and a portfolio of performing services.

• Keynote 2: The road towards a digital infrastructure for education – ROUSE, Paul, Chief Community Relations Officer, GEANT, UK
  
  

  Paul ROUSE joined GÉANT in 2011 as Head of Procurement, leading and growing the procurement team, and quickly established himself as a highly effective, professional and valued member of the community. In that time he has overseen extensive procurement activity relating not only to the pan-European GÉANT network where he has secured extensive savings, but has also played a central role in the success of GÉANT’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service framework, as well as supporting research community engagement with EUMETSAT, ESA and ESnet. In fact, Paul’s involvement and influence continues to benefit numerous projects and initiatives across Europe and beyond, including the Eastern Partnership Connect project EaPConnect, the Collaboration Asia-Europe-1 (CAE-1) 100Gbps link between Singapore and London, as well as the BELLA submarine cable linking Europe and Latin America. Prior to GÉANT, Paul held several procurement roles in commercial and public sector organisations and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply. He holds a BSc in Technology and Management Science, Business and Technology. Paul was appointed Chief Community Relations Officer in early 2020, and is responsible for Partner and Stakeholder Relations, International Relations, Research Engagement, Community Support, and Learning and Development.

• Keynote 3: Equity, Access and Visibility of a digitalized African College and University: Are we there yet? – MAWIRE, Blessing, Partnerships Coordinator: Hidden Collections Initiative, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Alexandria, VA (Based in Pretoria, South Africa)
  

  Ms MAWIRE has experience working in Sub-Sahara Africa in the areas of Project Management, Strategic Innovations, Capacity Building, Knowledge Management, Heritage Assets Management, Digital Inclusion and Critical Appraisal of Evidence. Over her career, Blessing has led the implementation of multi-country/regional projects across Sub-Saharan Africa and worked with diverse global partners from community-based organizations, research institutions, governments and United Nations agencies. Ms Mawire has strong experience in designing information and knowledge management approaches tailor-made for specific communities with a focus on sustainable impacts. Particularly, she has expertise in areas of digital access and inclusion for low resourced communities and bridging the knowledge divide. Her experience extends to strategy development, team management, partnership building, policy dialogue, monitoring and evaluation (including data collection and analysis), management of online communities of practice, technical writing, using sustainable development approaches, and development of youth programmes.

• Closing Session
  
  • Local Organising Committee Chair
  • Chair and CEO Botsren
  • CEO UbuntuNet Alliance
  • Chair UbuntuNet Alliance